6 ms·

This somehow confirms my gut feeling that digital certificates are mainly a means to enforce exclusion on behalf of the certificate authority ownership. It is a

This somehow confirms my gut feeling that digital certificates are mainly a means to enforce exclusion on behalf of the certificate authority ownership. It is a tool to prevent people from taking full ownership and control of whatever is affected by digital certificates, be it software, firmware, hardware, or as in this case SSL/TLS. That's digital tyranny in disguise.

kube-system 3mo ago
The entire point of a trust model is to exclude people. That's the stated goal. If you want encryption without trust, just use self-signed certs.
- 13415 3mo ago
  The problem is that the current trust model is totally untrustworthy.
  - kube-system 3mo ago
    Philosophically, trust isn't a "solvable" problem. It can only be mitigated to varying degrees. However, some degree of trust is probably better than none.
    - 13415 3mo ago
      One thing is sure, pinning trust on trust chains down from Root Certificate Authorities is fundamentally incompatible with our notion of trust and an almost absurd idea to start with. Most people using a browser don't even know any person from such an organization nor would or should they have any rational reason to trust them.
      - kube-system 3mo ago
        > our notion of trust I suspect I may have a different notion of trust than you > Most people using a browser don't even know any person from such an organization nor would or should they have any rational reason to trust them. Back up one step further -- most people using a browser don't understand the problem set we're talking about even exists
        13415 3mo ago
        As long as you're human, you don't have a substantially different notion of trust than I do. It's part of human psychology. We had to evolve it as social beings. I've seen very ad hoc CS papers on "trust", though, which IMHO were based on nothing but fantasy. Perhaps you had one of those re-definitions in mind. I tried to contribute to this pointless literature myself for a while until I realized that it's completely fictitious. All you can say from a mathematical perspective is that trust builds up very slowly based on a numerous factors and, if betrayed, goes down very fast and stays there. However, the notion doesn't have enough substance for a fruitful non-psychological modeling; there is just not enough ideal rationality behind it.
- lxgr 3mo ago
  If you don't care about who you're talking to, why use certificates at all?
  - kube-system 3mo ago
    If you don't care about who you're talking to, why use encryption at all?
MarleTangible 3mo ago
I always saw it as a trust-chain and think that anyone is welcomed to create a root certificate and distribute it to whomever trusts them. Most simple services may not need TLS, but with the ISPs eavesdropping on our communication, a form of secure communication is required and the currently best solution we have requires a trust-chain to be built.
- Parodper 3mo ago
  We could, and should, switch to DANE. Or else, switch to how X.509 was supposed to be used, with each country running a CA for their nationals.
  - theamk 3mo ago
    I trust governments much less that a conglomerate of competing corporations. With all the problems with Web PKI, at least the bad actors are getting distrusted, and this provides a very strong enforcement on the rest. And Certificate Transparency makes sure the mis-issuance would be caught. It is not perfect by any means, but things are getting better. With DANE (or other country-issued certificates), every government will absolutely double-issue certificates to police, secret service and friends of goverment, and no one will have any recourse. (In the past I'd say that only countries like Russia would do it.. but with today's climate, I am sure both US and many European countries will do that too)
    - account42 3mo ago
      Pretty much any big government has a CA they can exert direct control over whenever needed.
      - theamk 3mo ago
        Maybe, but then can only do it once. Then they get caught, and their CA is distrusted. See Diginotar [0] for example. And things only gotten better since - we now have CT logs, and browsers require them, so any mis-issuance can be detected automatically, by any interested third party. If we go to DANE, we lose this all. "Oops, our CT uploader process failed, we will fix Real Soon(tm) we promise" - and what are browsers going to do? Distrust the entire country? [0] https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2011/09/02/diginotar-removal-follow-up/ https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2011/09/02/diginotar-remov...
palmotea 3mo ago
> This somehow confirms my gut feeling that digital certificates are mainly a means to enforce exclusion on behalf of the certificate authority ownership. It is a tool to prevent people from taking full ownership and control of whatever is affected by digital certificates, be it software, firmware, hardware, or as in this case SSL/TLS. That's digital tyranny in disguise. I think the "digital tyranny" is a side effect, not the main goal. They're "mainly a means" to prevent certain kinds of MITM attacks.
- account42 3mo ago
  You could that with a much saner approach like DANE.
  - franga2000 3mo ago
    Not back when SSL and the PKI ecosystem was developed.
    - trumpdong 3mo ago
      Yes actually you still could've. But it would require a pass through the IETF to stabdaddize a DNS record type, and that would delay Netscape's release.
      - franga2000 3mo ago
        Any DNS-based solution needs something like DNSSEC to work. I believe DNSSEC didn't exist yet when HTTPS was being developed and even if it did, it wasn't anywhere near ubiquitous enough. Is it even these days?
        account42 3mo ago
        That's kind of like saying that any CA-based solution needs something like a root program. Sure, but that would just be part of creating a DANE-like solution. Both the current CA solution and DANE or another hypothetical DNS-based solution are fundamentally similar on a technical level: hierarchical delegation of authorization backed by public key crypto. The main difference is where on the delegation chain you limit authority for further delegation and who controls the root. The DNS-based approach has the crypto system reflect real ownership while the CA-based approach has browsers makers at the top and whoever pays enough money and hasn't publicly fucked up yet at the middle with delegated authority to sign literally everything.
belorn 3mo ago
While it seems like certificate authority has the primary control here, the real control lies in browsers and operative systems in which certificate authorities are trusted. Users also have, at least for the moment, control to add or remove certificate authorities, even if that control is slightly less clear for devices like smart phones. Digital certificates that signs software packages are used to enforce exclusion by some manufacturers. Let's encrypt is not in that space to my knowledge, but it is a place where you the owner do not have the right to determine which certificate authority should be trusted, and generally the only one that is trusted is the manufacturer. Its arguable if we even should be calling such entities a certificate authority, even if they technically are the owner of the root certificate that signs the package.
- hulitu 3mo ago
  > the real control lies in browsers and operative systems in which certificate authorities are trusted Wasn't Let's encrypt a Mozilla child ? The real control lies at who defines what is trusted.
  - ulfbert_inc 3mo ago
    Local control, maybe. But not the power.

kube-system 3mo ago

The entire point of a trust model is to exclude people. That's the stated goal. If you want encryption without trust, just use self-signed certs.

13415 3mo ago
The problem is that the current trust model is totally untrustworthy.
- kube-system 3mo ago
  Philosophically, trust isn't a "solvable" problem. It can only be mitigated to varying degrees. However, some degree of trust is probably better than none.
  - 13415 3mo ago
    One thing is sure, pinning trust on trust chains down from Root Certificate Authorities is fundamentally incompatible with our notion of trust and an almost absurd idea to start with. Most people using a browser don't even know any person from such an organization nor would or should they have any rational reason to trust them.
    - kube-system 3mo ago
      > our notion of trust I suspect I may have a different notion of trust than you > Most people using a browser don't even know any person from such an organization nor would or should they have any rational reason to trust them. Back up one step further -- most people using a browser don't understand the problem set we're talking about even exists
      - 13415 3mo ago
        As long as you're human, you don't have a substantially different notion of trust than I do. It's part of human psychology. We had to evolve it as social beings. I've seen very ad hoc CS papers on "trust", though, which IMHO were based on nothing but fantasy. Perhaps you had one of those re-definitions in mind. I tried to contribute to this pointless literature myself for a while until I realized that it's completely fictitious. All you can say from a mathematical perspective is that trust builds up very slowly based on a numerous factors and, if betrayed, goes down very fast and stays there. However, the notion doesn't have enough substance for a fruitful non-psychological modeling; there is just not enough ideal rationality behind it.
lxgr 3mo ago
If you don't care about who you're talking to, why use certificates at all?
- kube-system 3mo ago
  If you don't care about who you're talking to, why use encryption at all?

MarleTangible 3mo ago

I always saw it as a trust-chain and think that anyone is welcomed to create a root certificate and distribute it to whomever trusts them. Most simple services may not need TLS, but with the ISPs eavesdropping on our communication, a form of secure communication is required and the currently best solution we have requires a trust-chain to be built.

Parodper 3mo ago
We could, and should, switch to DANE. Or else, switch to how X.509 was supposed to be used, with each country running a CA for their nationals.
- theamk 3mo ago
  I trust governments much less that a conglomerate of competing corporations. With all the problems with Web PKI, at least the bad actors are getting distrusted, and this provides a very strong enforcement on the rest. And Certificate Transparency makes sure the mis-issuance would be caught. It is not perfect by any means, but things are getting better. With DANE (or other country-issued certificates), every government will absolutely double-issue certificates to police, secret service and friends of goverment, and no one will have any recourse. (In the past I'd say that only countries like Russia would do it.. but with today's climate, I am sure both US and many European countries will do that too)
  - account42 3mo ago
    Pretty much any big government has a CA they can exert direct control over whenever needed.
    - theamk 3mo ago
      Maybe, but then can only do it once. Then they get caught, and their CA is distrusted. See Diginotar [0] for example. And things only gotten better since - we now have CT logs, and browsers require them, so any mis-issuance can be detected automatically, by any interested third party. If we go to DANE, we lose this all. "Oops, our CT uploader process failed, we will fix Real Soon(tm) we promise" - and what are browsers going to do? Distrust the entire country? [0] https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2011/09/02/diginotar-removal-follow-up/ https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2011/09/02/diginotar-remov...

palmotea 3mo ago

> This somehow confirms my gut feeling that digital certificates are mainly a means to enforce exclusion on behalf of the certificate authority ownership. It is a tool to prevent people from taking full ownership and control of whatever is affected by digital certificates, be it software, firmware, hardware, or as in this case SSL/TLS. That's digital tyranny in disguise. I think the "digital tyranny" is a side effect, not the main goal. They're "mainly a means" to prevent certain kinds of MITM attacks.

account42 3mo ago
You could that with a much saner approach like DANE.
- franga2000 3mo ago
  Not back when SSL and the PKI ecosystem was developed.
  - trumpdong 3mo ago
    Yes actually you still could've. But it would require a pass through the IETF to stabdaddize a DNS record type, and that would delay Netscape's release.
    - franga2000 3mo ago
      Any DNS-based solution needs something like DNSSEC to work. I believe DNSSEC didn't exist yet when HTTPS was being developed and even if it did, it wasn't anywhere near ubiquitous enough. Is it even these days?
      - account42 3mo ago
        That's kind of like saying that any CA-based solution needs something like a root program. Sure, but that would just be part of creating a DANE-like solution. Both the current CA solution and DANE or another hypothetical DNS-based solution are fundamentally similar on a technical level: hierarchical delegation of authorization backed by public key crypto. The main difference is where on the delegation chain you limit authority for further delegation and who controls the root. The DNS-based approach has the crypto system reflect real ownership while the CA-based approach has browsers makers at the top and whoever pays enough money and hasn't publicly fucked up yet at the middle with delegated authority to sign literally everything.

belorn 3mo ago

While it seems like certificate authority has the primary control here, the real control lies in browsers and operative systems in which certificate authorities are trusted. Users also have, at least for the moment, control to add or remove certificate authorities, even if that control is slightly less clear for devices like smart phones. Digital certificates that signs software packages are used to enforce exclusion by some manufacturers. Let's encrypt is not in that space to my knowledge, but it is a place where you the owner do not have the right to determine which certificate authority should be trusted, and generally the only one that is trusted is the manufacturer. Its arguable if we even should be calling such entities a certificate authority, even if they technically are the owner of the root certificate that signs the package.

hulitu 3mo ago
> the real control lies in browsers and operative systems in which certificate authorities are trusted Wasn't Let's encrypt a Mozilla child ? The real control lies at who defines what is trusted.
- ulfbert_inc 3mo ago
  Local control, maybe. But not the power.