From: Drak <drak@zikula•org>
To: Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail•com>
Cc: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Dedicated server for bitcoin.org, your thoughts?
Date: Sun, 8 Dec 2013 21:07:54 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CANAnSg28awKbAGQS7-kNmenbU00XVB1gpN4c0A3dhGxaH4sxWw@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAAS2fgT=0m=0-C+MNotUy6nqwcR-Y+YTNYrS8DZptMo5vCMRnA@mail.gmail.com>
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3152 bytes --]
On 8 December 2013 20:50, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail•com> wrote:
> Sadly this isn't true: There are (many) CAs which will issue a
> certificate (apparently sometime within minutes, though last
> certificate I obtained took a couple hours total) to anyone who can
> respond to http (not https) requests on behalf of the domain from the
> perspective of the CA.
>
Simple verification relies on being able to answer the email sent to the
person in the whois records, or standard admin/webmaster@ addresses to
prove ownership of the domain. This is a good point to note -
bitcoin.orgshould not get a simple certificate, but one that requires
identify
verification for the person/org who is applying. They are more expensive.
> This means you can MITM the site, pass all traffic through except the
> HTTP request from the CA, and start intercepting once the CA has
> signed your certificate. This works because the CA does nothing to
> verify identity except check that the requester can control the site.
>
> If you'd like to me to demonstrate this attack for you I'd be willing—
> I can provide a proxy that passes on :80 and :443, run your traffic
> through it and I'll get a cert with your domain name.
>
You cannot MITM SSL connections - it will cause a browser warning.
I do not have the means, but it has been demonstrated some people are
performing BGP redirections, daily, and on a massive scale... and it's a
problem, because BGP was designed on implicit trust.
> I'm sorry for the tangent here— I think this sub-discussion is really
> unrelated to having Bitcoin.org behind SSL— but "someone is wrong on
> the internet", and its important to know that SSL hardly does anything
> to reduce the need to check the offline signatures on the binaries.
You are right that the CA system is not full-proof, one CA was caught
issuing a bogus certificate on purpose a while back, I forgot the name but
it resulted in CA certificate revokation and the entire company being
blacklisted from Firefox and Google Chrome forever - basically a summary
corporate execution. I personally imagine the CIA or other state actor
could just quietly buy up an already trusted CA and abuse them. But it's
clear, people are watching, and if a CA is caught once, that's the end of
their business forever: Firefox and Google demonstrated that. The strategy
is possibly too expensive and risky to carry off which is maybe why they
don't do it.
What has been noted with all the Snowden leaks, and with the Lavabit case,
the security agencies did not get bogus certificates issued, they still got
court orders, or other deception to get hold of the encryption certificates
of their targets instead of issuing their own so they could listen in.
The CA system is not full proof, but it is what we have. Similar arguments
have been made against the use of identity certificates for bitcoin, but
that hasnt stopped it's inclusion in the bitcoin payment protocol.
Anyway, I take your points, but this is an area I am quite passionate about
so it's important for me to be clear.
Regards,
Drak
[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 4053 bytes --]
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2013-12-08 21:08 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 56+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2013-12-08 1:17 Saïvann Carignan
2013-12-08 3:38 ` Odinn Cyberguerrilla
2013-12-08 9:03 ` Saïvann Carignan
2013-12-08 12:37 ` Luke-Jr
2013-12-08 19:16 ` Drak
2013-12-08 19:25 ` Gregory Maxwell
2013-12-08 20:28 ` Mike Hearn
2013-12-08 20:40 ` Gregory Maxwell
2013-12-08 20:51 ` Drak
2013-12-08 21:01 ` Luke-Jr
2013-12-08 21:11 ` Drak
2013-12-08 23:51 ` theymos
2013-12-09 0:06 ` Taylor Gerring
2013-12-09 6:29 ` Jeremy Spilman
2013-12-09 10:54 ` Roy Badami
2013-12-10 9:18 ` Odinn Cyberguerrilla
2013-12-08 21:09 ` Gregory Maxwell
2013-12-08 21:16 ` Saïvann Carignan
2013-12-08 21:58 ` Roy Badami
2013-12-08 23:03 ` Mike Hearn
2013-12-09 5:32 ` Jeff Garzik
2013-12-08 22:44 ` Gavin Andresen
2013-12-08 23:48 ` Saïvann Carignan
2013-12-08 23:18 ` Luke-Jr
2013-12-08 23:29 ` Patrick
2013-12-08 21:46 ` Mark Friedenbach
2013-12-08 20:40 ` Drak
2013-12-08 20:50 ` Gregory Maxwell
2013-12-08 21:07 ` Drak [this message]
2013-12-08 21:14 ` Gregory Maxwell
2013-12-08 22:27 ` Robert McKay
2013-12-12 20:51 ` Adam Back
2013-12-31 13:39 ` Drak
2013-12-31 13:48 ` Gregory Maxwell
2013-12-31 13:59 ` Mike Hearn
2013-12-31 14:18 ` Gregory Maxwell
2013-12-31 14:23 ` Mike Hearn
2013-12-31 21:25 ` Jeremy Spilman
2013-12-31 21:33 ` Matt Corallo
2014-01-01 10:02 ` Jeremy Spilman
2014-01-01 11:37 ` Wladimir
2014-01-01 15:10 ` Mike Hearn
2014-01-01 22:15 ` Mike Hearn
2014-01-02 19:49 ` Jorge Timón
2013-12-31 14:05 ` Benjamin Cordes
2014-01-03 5:45 ` Troy Benjegerdes
2014-01-03 9:59 ` Drak
2014-01-03 11:22 ` Tier Nolan
2014-01-03 13:09 ` Adam Back
2014-01-03 17:38 ` Troy Benjegerdes
2014-01-03 18:21 ` Jorge Timón
2014-01-04 1:43 ` Troy Benjegerdes
2013-12-08 10:00 ` Drak
2013-12-08 12:39 ` Luke-Jr
2013-12-08 16:51 ` Gregory Maxwell
2013-12-08 16:08 ` Wladimir
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=CANAnSg28awKbAGQS7-kNmenbU00XVB1gpN4c0A3dhGxaH4sxWw@mail.gmail.com \
--to=drak@zikula$(echo .)org \
--cc=bitcoin-development@lists$(echo .)sourceforge.net \
--cc=gmaxwell@gmail$(echo .)com \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox