I looked at the malformed certificate and said “I’m not stepping past this point”.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here. I’ve written code that is still used by SWIFT to this day. Does that make me a banker apologist? (Also which of approximately 10,000 projects named NamesDB?)
Getting a fake certificate signed requires state level opposition or entities with that level of resources, and frankly if your opposition is state level, you’re fucked anyway.
Self-signed certs let Jimmy-Joe-Bob’s Rifle Range and Real Good Hacker Script Kiddie Ring fake you out in minutes.
Getting a fake certificate signed requires state level opposition or entities with that level of resources
Yeah like I said, if they can hijack your traffic, they can easily get a fake cert signed.
Self-signed certs let Jimmy-Joe-Bob’s Rifle Range and Real Good Hacker Script Kiddie Ring fake you out in minutes.
How? They would have to steal the CA key and could only impersonate the site with the self signed cert. (At least if you don’t add it to your certificate store)
The cert is self-signed. There isby definition no CA key! Anybody accessing that sight, unless they did something phenomenally stupid, is going to have to validate access by self-signed cert on each access. And that means that any MitM isn’t going to flag any alarms … because they’d be inserting themselves as a self-signed cert.
I looked at the malformed certificate and said “I’m not stepping past this point”.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here. I’ve written code that is still used by SWIFT to this day. Does that make me a banker apologist? (Also which of approximately 10,000 projects named NamesDB?)
The certificate isn’t “malformed” it’s just not signed by one of the holy approved certificate authorities.
Allow me to rephrase.
I looked at the dodgy certificate and said “I’m not stepping past this point”.
You certainly didn’t miss anything, but the certificate isn’t any more dodgy than that of any other site.
Self-signed certificates are too silly to bother with. Might as well go straight http if you’re going to go self-signed.
A CA-signed cert reduces the chance of a bad actor between me and the target site. A self-signed cert opens the door to trivial MitM attacks.
Because bad actors that can hijack your traffic are unable to get a fake certificate signed?!
How would that be?
Getting a fake certificate signed requires state level opposition or entities with that level of resources, and frankly if your opposition is state level, you’re fucked anyway.
Self-signed certs let Jimmy-Joe-Bob’s Rifle Range and Real Good Hacker Script Kiddie Ring fake you out in minutes.
Yeah like I said, if they can hijack your traffic, they can easily get a fake cert signed.
How? They would have to steal the CA key and could only impersonate the site with the self signed cert. (At least if you don’t add it to your certificate store)
The cert is self-signed. There is by definition no CA key! Anybody accessing that sight, unless they did something phenomenally stupid, is going to have to validate access by self-signed cert on each access. And that means that any MitM isn’t going to flag any alarms … because they’d be inserting themselves as a self-signed cert.