If SSL doesn't change, this move will cut the little folks out of the internet. What are Mozilla's values?
From the site: Let’s Encrypt is a new Certificate Authority: It’s free, automated, and open. Arriving Mid-2015
The web is moving faster every day, apparently. I sure do hope that project will be all it's chalked up to be.
For example, I need IP-only certs for a new project I'm working on (waiting for DNS to propagate to all clients is too unreliable and slow). If letsencrypt doesn't do that... well then I'd have to hope real hard for a competent CA out there who has an automated process available that allows IP-only certs. And whatever their price, if companies start following Mozilla's lead too soon, I'll have to pay up.
The wording in the article is perhaps not so damning yet, but it's still making me uneasy that they put out this press release while there are currently ZERO viable solutions for this.
"Note that while ACME is defined with enough flexibility to handle different types of identifiers in principle, the primary use case addressed by this document is the case where domain names are used as identifiers. For example, all of the identifier validation challenges described in Section {identifier-validation-challenges} below address validation of domain names. The use of ACME for other protocols will require further specification, in order to describe how these identifiers are encoded in the protocol, and what types of validation challenges the server might require."
https://cabforum.org/internal-names/
The PDF document defines "Reserved IP Address" as "An IPv4 or IPv6 address that the IANA has marked as reserved".
I watched a demo where they went from a vanilla apache install to an A scoring HTTPS site in sub 5 minutes at Libreplanet. It's a good idea to publicize the upcoming LARGE change.
On the other hand, our infrastructure, partnerships, and technology are very real. I hope they'll make the process just as easy as what you saw for many people soon.
I'm curious about your requirement for IP only certs? Sure you don't "own" a domain name, but it's even less true that you "own" a specific IP address. (Well, at least for me, perhaps if your project is in the datacenter/isp/network-infrastructure space you might actually have some cintractual "ownership" of an IP address?)
Anyone incapable of following the steps required there is probably not who you'd want implementing your web server security…
If you're going the minimally technical route then you're using shared or managed hosting and it's not your job to set up the SSL.
Crypto is non-trivial. There'll never be a proper "Click this button to automatically secure your random php app running in cPanel/Plesk".
The best we'll see I suspect is a "click here and make your website pass the minimal checks modern browsers use to determine if you're secure", then we'll have a daily stream of site owners claiming "the PII/password/creditcard breach wasn't my fault - I used 2048 bit encryption!"
This doesn't make any sense. You're not waiting for DNS to propagate to clients; if anything you're waiting for recursive DNS servers at shitty ISPs to time out their caches when they are configured to not honor the RR's TTL sent by the authoritative server in a misguided attempt to make the internet "faster".
But this is completely avoidable without having to use IPs or certificates with CN/SAN that are IPs: get a wildcard cert and rotate the subdomain name. It's a new hostname, so it busts intermediate DNS caches by being new queries; since it's a new query, there's no "propagation to clients" to wait for when you change IPs, all queries for the new name hit authoritative servers. Additionally, it looks infinitely more legit than a website that is accessible only via IP address. And doubly additionally, if you're going through so many IPs, presumably you'll be rotating some out and those may be assigned to other people who can then get their own cert for that IP and impersonate you.
I assumed the grandparent simply didn't understand the need to lower his TTLs.
Some quick tests with dig seem to indicate that, at least for the region I'm in, my queries to google's public DNS is rotating between 4 or 5 servers, as evidenced by the TTLs being returned.
It occurred rarely, but a few years ago it was a regular problem because some bigger ISPs were doing it[0]. Not sure how common it is these days.
That being said, I'm having troubling coming up with a project that would be better served with IP addresses than a constant name, so I have no idea what the OP I was responding to could be doing that that problem needed to be addressed at all.
What I want involved is an identity verification organization whose mission is clearly defined to be identity verification and management of a PKI trust.
Rob Graham was called out in this article which was subsequently edited: https://twitter.com/ErrataRob/status/553716844650307584
Also, they lie constantly, in lousy attempts of populism and being lavished with attention: http://blog.erratasec.com/2014/07/eff-lies-about-netneutrali...
Their staff might be feminists, but that doesn't mean they engage in gender discrimination. If you have something better, post it.
If the friction for testing, say, an enterprise LOB app on an internal-only QA IIS server is any higher than "basically zero" with Firefox, and the same friction doesn't apply to Chrome or IE, well.
2. Let's Encrypt will use an open protocol, so it should be OS-agnostic.
3. "Privileged Contexts" is being developed as a W3C working draft [1]. It's quite likely this won't be just a Mozilla-thing. Google has been fairly aggressive when it comes to pushing for more (and better) SSL as well (see SHA1 cert deprecation).
How does you corporation handle actually important corporate sites that nobody must access?
It sound to my like your corp has some issues on this side.
It doesn't, they ship a tool only for convenience. An open source tool running on your machine would be reverse-engineerable anyway. Plus, it is expected that shared hosting providers will run the tool for you.
Currently SSL is a revenue stream for many shared hosting providers. Are there are on-record comments from major providers who are planning on supporting Let's Encrypt?
The only problem is lack of browser support for server name indication so one IP can be shared by many customers, but it's getting less of an issue by end-users renewing their hardware or updating their browser.
Not great for people running small websites.
$9 - $11 / year for perfectly good certs. Less than $1 per month is a small burden.
https://www.namecheap.com/security/ssl-certificates/domain-v...
So long as you don't need any subdomains, right?
I actually expect the price of plaintext HTTP hosting to go up a bit; partly due to reduced demand, but also due to increased risk/liability. With SSL being the "industry best practice", I expect at least a few bean counters will view the risk of private information leaks or hypothetical legal liability for enabling DDOS (similar to the "attractive nuisance" doctrine).
There will be a turbulent transition period, of course. As someone currently living at the poverty line, I have argued against the CA system many times. A SSL cert (and anual renewal) may be an insignificant cost to some people, but it is a real barrier when tha cost represents days/weeks of food. Unfortunately, none of this removes the need for encryption or the risks of plaintext. This is why I'm very excited about Let’s Encrypt; It might solve the cost problem, and it might avoid the StartSSL "no second-source" problem because it is a protocol first.
Internet use is only going up, so these transition costs are only going to go up. We can pay it now, or pay even more in the future.
Also, why do you think the supply of SSL hosting services is necessarily limited any more than traditional plaintext hosting would be?
You could compare it to IPsec, which is what most VPNs use, which is comparable in security and design. They both, together with SSL, suffer from a bad case of design-by-committee, including atrocities like X509.
DNSSEC did get an important thing right. You are in full control of your own keys, and your DNS provider can not impersonate you. Having an external DNS hosting provider was not common back then, but it is now, and I'm glad they got that right.
Indeed, but afaik there are methods to mitigate it (NSEC3) and more refined ones in development (NSEC4, NSEC5).
Now you might say don't trust the registrar, trust the people who run the .com (or whatever) TLD. That's getting close to what DNSSEC does, which some people say is better. But CAs weren't designed for this like DNSSEC. With the way CAs work, we would have to give the runners of .com power over all domains, which some people might not think is so bad. But it would also mean we would have to give the owners of .sucks power over all domains as well, which most people would be against.
The idea was that users should want to validate they speak with the organization McDonald's, not with mcdonalds.com which may or may not belong to them. Turns out users don't, and that the distinction gets even less important over time. Domain names is an important identifier for an organization now. You can still however see the old process at work in EV certificates, which normally carries an extra cost.
If SSL had been designed for domain validation from the start, if would have looked like DNSSEC. Cryptographically verified domain assignments is a good idea, and infinitely more secure than the domain validation schemes we use today.
Here at HN there are a handful who can't resist going on about NSA every time DNSSEC is mentioned, so I expect a few of those now. Please do understand the whole picture and how the complete certificate stack works before taking those statements at face value.
FYI that's exactly what EV SSL does now - hence the company checks, and the green bar:
Eg, here's a regular certificate
openssl x509 -in example.com.crt -noout -text | grep Subject
Subject: 1.3.6.1.4.1.311.60.2.1.3=GB/businessCategory=Private Organization/serialNumber=09378892, C=GB, ST=City of London, L=London, O=example Limited, CN=billing.example.com, DNS:billing.example.com, DNS:www.billing.example.com
Clarity, because there will be so much distilled information and tooling around setup.
Affordability, because there will be so much volume that companies will start to compete on price in the same way that domain companies do.
Major browser vendors like Google and Mozilla don't change their policies in a vacuum while the rest of the world stays static. The move to "deprecate" HTTP is an explicit attempt to manipulate the rest of the world into making SSL easier and more affordable. It is unfair to evaluate this proposal in isolation without considering the market upheaval that it is very much intended to trigger.
Currently, most web hosts charge a hefty markup on SSL certificates and charge even more to enable them on a website hosted with them. This practice may no longer be sustainable as more and more people begin to demand SSL. "Free SSL with every 1-year contract!" could well become a standard marketing slogan, just as "Free domain with every 1-year contract!" has been for the last 10+ years.
Some domain registrars already offer free or low-cost (~$1.99) SSL certificates with the purchase of every domain. This may become more widespread as registrars scramble to remain competitive.
Android 2.x and Windows XP are major excuses for not adopting SNI, but the upcoming release of Windows 10 will reduce the market share of XP even further, and old Android's lifespan is also running out thanks to the planned obsolescence of mobile devices. By 2017-18, nobody will care about these platforms anymore, and if anyone still does, we can tell them to get Firefox.
Even without StartSSL or Let's Encrypt, existing CAs may be forced to cut their prices drastically as a horde of super-price-conscious consumers begin to flood their once prestigious trading floor. Some CAs have already been offering $20 wildcard certs through selected resellers. Expect more of these offers in the near future. This is a race to the bottom, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it!
To top it off, CloudFlare is offering free SSL (SNI required) to everyone. Expect services like this to become more common as SSL comes to be seen as an essential component of every online service.
Of course, there's no guarantee that these changes will occur. But I can guarantee that most of them will not occur unless there's massive, organized presssure on the lazy, greedy incumbents. Google and Mozilla are doing the world a great service by adding their weight to this much-needed pressure. Remember when the rest of the world basically ran an extortion racket to force the web hosting industry into upgrading to PHP 5? That was glorious. I want to see it happen again, this time for easy and affordable SSL.
If the deadline arrives and the world still isn't ready for the transition, we'll think again and adjust our strategies accordingly. Nothing wrong with that. In the meantime, let's be optimistic and go bully some web hosts!
I'd love to believe this but I've never once seen the https-only nazis bring up this issue on their own, or show any concern for the fact that it will limit speech on the web. The y mostly work for companies where getting ssl certs is no big deal, and they put their personal projects on github or heroku anyways.
The backbone of the web was the fact that you could put up a website on your own computer within a matter of minutes. That is now going to be gone and I've never seen the biggest advocates of this change show any concern whatsoever.
The plan is to disable some of the "more dangerous" features when the page is requested over HTTP, in order to entice webmasters to adopt SSL. The list hasn't even been written yet, but I'm guessing that most of those features will be fancy javascript and third-party plugins like Flash. Which you probably shouldn't rely on being enabled in the first place.
I personally wouldn't mind if every insecure page behaved as if I had NoScript & NoFlash enabled by default.
You may be right about the excessive idealism of so-called HTTPS nazis on some online forums, but I'm pretty sure that the people in charge at Google and Mozilla are more level-headed and realistic.
> the goal of this effort is to send a message to the web developer community that they need to be secure
> That would allow things like CSS and other rendering features to still be used by insecure websites ... [but] restrict qualitatively new features, such as access to new hardware capabilities ... [like] persistent permissions for camera and microphone access
If accessing my camera over an insecure connection is your definition of doing interesting things, I would be happy to block you.
In fact, I can't think of a single proposed addition to the current web stack that would be safe to use over an insecure connection.
You have every right to express your views using a static document and stylesheet. But anything beyond that tends to involve executing your code on my computer, and nobody has any obligation to let you do that, especially over an insecure connection. Requiring people to make some additional effort before they can access other people's property sounds like a nice balance of rights and obligations to me.
> The plan is to disable some of the "more dangerous" features when the page is requested over HTTP
And now you're saying that every new feature falls into this category.
Listen, I'm all for going all-in on SSL. What I'm not for is doing until SSL is as seamless and inexpensive as HTTP.
What really concerns me is that the https-only nazis do not share this concern. It's never mentioned in their blog posts.
It actually really scares me that something that has been so important for making the web as powerful for the cause of freedom is not even on the radar of the people who are controlling the direction of the web.
My fundamental disagreement with you is that I don't think we can wait until "SSL is as seamless and inexpensive as HTTP". That will never happen unless we can pose a credible threat to the profit margins of web hosts and CAs. And sending a horde of unsatisfied customers in their general direction is one of the most effective ways to pose such a threat.
Also having it developed by 19 university types and one guy from Bell labs was asking for trouble
Subtle misreading. It's not that new features are in that category by definition, it's that every major feature proposal kijin has seen so far has been of the dangerous sort.
[0] http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/24/with-google-domains-its-tim...
This "certificates are expensive" argument was only valid a decade ago, we have free certs now.
This applies to HTTP as well. That's why Firefox and Chrome will be visibly warning it's insecure.
Revocation isn't part of the normal lifecyle of TLS certificates either: you'll only need this once you've had a security breach.
Mozilla pushing forward aggressively forces people to address the pain points.
I can't find anything lower than $60.
[1] http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/39165/vmbox-co-openvz-ssd-c...
$45 for a one year wildcard
(not affiliated, but have bought a few certs from them without problems)
StartCom offers the free (for personal use) Class 1 X.509 SSL certificate "StartSSL Free"
The 1-click installations that are provided by the hosts are usually more than that.
Yes, even $50/year for a business in not that big a deal but so much of the market has international users where $50 is really expensive. There are also small time hobby/businesses where $50 makes an impact.