Hacker News Reader

Comment by smackeyacky | Hacker News Reader

There is one reason I can think of for encrypting websites, it tells you the information is coming from where you expect and not an interloper.

I agree its worth thinking about about serviceability and longevity but I can't help feeling like it would be like worrying about keeping a PDP 11 running for fifty years.

View on HN

General Electric is actually commited to run PDP-11 for another 30 years, until 2050.

And it’s already 52 years old, today. Seems like solved problem.

https://m.slashdot.org/story/187671

This purpose could be accomplished with a cryptographic signature of the plain text. Thin clients would have the option to just take the Internet's word for the provenance of the data, any system capable of running encryption algorithms can confirm they received the exact bytes the author intended.

This would be an example of progressive enhancement, which has fallen out of favor.

Why should I value the information from one internet stranger over another? You can't authenticate if you don't know who anyone is. If someone is consistently changing the information then someone is going to notice.

Just think about all that unauthenticated information in libraries. Anyone can replace pages in the books. Books can be substituted with completely fake copies. No one bothers to do this for the same reasons no one bothers to MITM connections to plain text web sites.

In a world where governments are even changing the ending to popular movies [0], how do you know that tampering with books and other sources of information aren't taking place?

Perhaps you're speaking specifically about American libraries, probably because most Americans don't head over to a book shelf for their information these days, but more generally speaking it's not that farfetched of an idea at all.

[0]https://nypost.com/2022/01/25/fight-club-ending-changed-in-c...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com