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Comment by lazyjones | Hacker News Reader

> no. It means "even though this connection is encrypted, there is no way to tell you whether you are currently talking to that site or to NSA which is forwarding all of your traffic to the site you're on".

That would be correct if you could assume that the NSA couldn't fake certificates for websites. But it can, so it's wrong and misleading. It's certificate pinning, notary systems etc. that actually give some credibility to the certificate you're currently using, not whatever the browsers indicate as default.

FWIW, (valid) rogue certificates have been found in the wild several times, CAs have been compromised etc. ...

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I agree. A more common MITM, and that it actually would prevent, comes from a rogue wifi operator.

> FWIW, (valid) rogue certificates have been found in the wild several times, CAs have been compromised etc. ...

And it's only going to get worse as SHA-1 become more and more affordable to crack.

The CAs have agreed to stop using SHA-1 by 2016, and Let's Encrypt will launch with something stronger on day one.

But SHA-1 attacks are going to be a huge problem all over our protocol stack :(

The NSA has no CA. The only attack they really have is brute force or server compromise - both of which undermine pinning.

They can get US corporations (including many CAs) to cooperate. For example, to obtain a fake (but perfectly working google.com certificate, they can ask Google (more or less) nicely to provide one, or they can go ask any CA instead. It's not likely that compromise is required with so many potential sources, some of which may be paid or coerced to cooperate.

PS. nice (presumably political) downvote further up ...

One would hope certificate transparency would help fix this problem.

(for the record, I didn't downvote you)

The NSA can do this, yes. But, any CA that issues a fake CA for Google will be found out rather quickly, and then will get blacklisted and lose business.

So while the NSA can technically do that, they only get a few shots cause each one has a high chance of burning the CA.

For lesser sites and narrow targets, this may not be true.

This is precisely the problem with centralized security authorities. As we've seen a state actor can easily force a central authority to share it's private key, thereby granting the state actor the ability to untraceably create it's own certificate chains.

It would also have to control the wire for the attack target, but via wire tapping laws that is already a solved problem. Because they control the connection of the attack target, I don't see how the fact that the certificate chain was compromised would ever become public knowledge.

Web of trust was designed to address the central authority weakness, but itself apparently has scalability issues, although I'm unclear on why.

Google is indeed in a (unique) good position to detect and possibly prevent a fake certificate, but we don't know if that's what they want or whether they can be coerced to cooperate. Millions of other websites are not protected in the same way.

Fake certificate for Google wouldn't work in Chrome at least. There is certificate pinning already.

That is completely ineffective if they get Google to cooperate and issue an update that pins the new cert - and due to how automatic updates work, the majority of users will be completely oblivious, and those who do notice the new certificate won't find it any more suspicious than any other certificate update.

NSA has NSL (national security letters with gag orders). There are CAs in the US. Mission accomplished.

Wouldn't help with google though - anybody who tried to fake a google cert would be caught by chrome within a few seconds. There is a lot of value associated with owning a browser. Enhanced security is just one of them.

You speak as if the power of NSLs has a functional limit - it doesn't, which is what makes the entire concept so dangerous.

There's nothing stopping the requirements from being "mint us a certificate according to these specs" and additionally "okay, now pin this certificate in your browser".

You might want to read up on what an NSL actually is, since you and the GP are clearly very confused.

It's a letter, issued by an occult kangaroo court, that coup d'etat forces hold in hand while demanding the keys to the kingdom - a demand that can't be challenged in a legitimate court of law.

Explain, please.

What prevents an NSL from compelling Google from minting a new certificate (they are a CA), providing the keys to the bad guys, and distributing that certificate in Chrome? NSLs have been used in the past to compel positive action (c.f. Lavabit), so I really don't see how you think there's any practical limit to their power.

My understanding is that there isn't a limit. If I am wrong about this, then kindly reply directly here so we can all learn instead of giving the "read up on" non-answer.

An NSL can be used only to compel release of connection or transaction metadata, and cannot be used to compel disclosure of message contents. It's basically a fast-track for getting things like call records, and it most emphatically cannot be used to compel turning over a certificate or allowing a man-in-the-middle.

To my knowledge the exact details of the Lavabit case were never released, but from what has been released it's quite clear that the issue was regarding a warrant and a gag order, because the ensuing litigation wouldn't have been remotely applicable to an NSL (otherwise Lavabit's attorney would have won on a walk).

None of this is to say that I think NSLs should exist. In fact, I think they're a terrible idea. But the vast majority of discussions around them and similar topics is so grossly uninformed that it's impossible to take most people seriously on these subjects.

Okay, so not an NSL. Incorrect terminology pointing at the same awful effect, an unaccountable court issuing unchallengeable rulings that cannot be discussed.

No substantial difference from the concept I'm complaining about.

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."

I'm now curious. Explain to me how an NSL fits into the scenario you're implying.

That would be stupid. Google is a US company. NSA has NSLs. Mission accomplished. No certs involved.

How did you get Google into all this? If you're implying that Google owns a search site/Gmail/a browser, know that there are alternatives, which NSA's target could be using. A fake certificate from a trusted US CA can MITM any connection to almost any website from almost any browser.

That should have been a reply to the sibling comment, where it was implied this would be a strategy against Google.

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