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posted by martyb on Thursday March 05 2020, @05:54PM   Printer-friendly

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Let’s Encrypt said it will give users of its Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates more time to replace 1 million certificates that are still active and potentially affected by a Certificate Authority Authorization (CAA) bug before it revokes them.

The popular free certificate authority had given users until Wednesday, March 4, 9:00 p.m. EST to replace 3 million certificates because the bug in its Boulder software—discovered and patched this past Sunday–impacted the way its software checked domain ownership before issuing certificates. However, users grumbled that this was not enough time to correct the problem.

Users and major integrators of Let’s Encrypt managed to replace more than 1.7 million of the affected certificates by the original deadline; however, more than 1 million were left that would have been revoked, causing the company to rethink its plan, a Let’s Encrypt spokeswoman told Threatpost late Wednesday.

“Rather than potentially break so many sites and cause concern for their visitors, we have determined that it is in the best interest of the health of the Internet for us to not revoke those certificates by the deadline,” Josh Aas, executive director for Let’s Encrypt said in a blog post updating users of the situation Wednesday.

The company’s plan now is to revoke 1,706,505 certificates that the company is confident were already replaced as well as “445 certificates that we treated as highest priority for revocation because, at the time we found the bug, they had CAA records that forbid issuance by Let’s Encrypt,” Aas wrote in the post.

“We plan to revoke more certificates as we become confident that doing so will not be needlessly disruptive to Web users,” he wrote.

Disclaimer: SoylentNews uses Let's Encrypt certificates.

Previously:
HTTPS for All: Let's Encrypt Reaches One Billion Certificates Issued [Updated]
Let's Encrypt: An Automated Certificate Authority to Encrypt the Entire Web


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Thursday March 05 2020, @07:15PM (24 children)

    by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Thursday March 05 2020, @07:15PM (#967044) Homepage Journal

    "Perfect" may be the enemy of the good, but "good enough" when it isn't is a much bigger problem. After a while, all the accumulating flaws begin to look suspicious.

    Please, do explain how encrypting data across the internet is worse than *not* encrypting data across the internet. This ought to be mildly amusing.

    Note that the certificates issued by Let'sEncrypt are designed to thwart in-transit eavesdropping as a *basic* level of confidentiality [wikipedia.org], with some level (given the lack of strong identity validation) of data integrity [wikipedia.org]. It is most certainly not designed for non-repudiation [wikipedia.org], nor does Let's Encrypt claim that its certificates should be used for that purpose.

    The huge advantage provided by Let's Encrypt comes from helping folks without the resources or skills to implement TLS certificates.

    This has had a big impact on the amount of web traffic being encrypted [duo.com]:

    At the start of 2019, 87 percent of Web traffic was encrypted, compared to just 53 percent in 2016,

    That's an unmitigated good and should be strongly encouraged, not "thrown out completely."

    You're making an unsupportable and, frankly, inane argument, your insinuations about some sort of conspiracy included.

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday March 05 2020, @07:32PM (16 children)

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Thursday March 05 2020, @07:32PM (#967050) Homepage
    If you can't be sure that the data you got was from the server you thought you were connectnig to, then the security you're talking about isn't security at all. Security is binary. Any value less than 1 is 0.
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 1, Redundant) by NotSanguine on Thursday March 05 2020, @07:37PM (1 child)

      by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Thursday March 05 2020, @07:37PM (#967053) Homepage Journal

      Note that the certificates issued by Let'sEncrypt are designed to thwart in-transit eavesdropping as a *basic* level of confidentiality [wikipedia.org], with some level (given the lack of strong identity validation) of data integrity [wikipedia.org]. It is most certainly not designed for non-repudiation [wikipedia.org], nor does Let's Encrypt claim that its certificates should be used for that purpose.

      --
      No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
      • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday March 06 2020, @11:44AM

        by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Friday March 06 2020, @11:44AM (#967360) Homepage
        Why did you bother repeating the same thing that you said before? The single thing that they're *supposed* to do, they *don't* do. That's not security, that's theatre. But I said that already.
        --
        Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Thursday March 05 2020, @07:56PM (6 children)

      by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Thursday March 05 2020, @07:56PM (#967065) Homepage Journal

      My apologies. I responded too quickly.

      Security is binary. Any value less than 1 is 0.

      that's a completely false statement.

      I have a deadbolt on my front door. It provides some level of security, but it can't stop someone from bashing the door down or taking the door off its hinges.

      By your logic, my deadbolt is useless and I shouldn't bother locking my door at all.

      And the same goes for passwords (they can be cracked, pulled from a hacked database, etc.). As such, passwords are useless and should never be used.

      Credit/debit cards can be cloned/stolen and I can be tortured into revealing my PIN. As such, chip and pin systems are completely useless.

      In fact, there is no such thing as perfect security. Which is obvious to those of us who actually *practice* infosec. Security is a continuum, and is (or should be) implemented on a scale and with the resources appropriate to whatever is being secured.

      I'm really cranky if I don't have my coffee in the morning. As such, making sure my coffee, and the means to brew it, are secure is pretty important to me. So. Do I get a safety deposit box to keep my coffee and brewing rig? That would pretty much ensure the security of that stuff, right?

      No. Because the *value* of such things, plus the need for access to those things, makes it impractical and a waste of resources to do so.

      If, instead, I had several million dollars in bearer bonds, I'd likely expend significantly more resources in securing them. And a safety deposit box might well be a good idea, rather than keeping them next to my coffee beans in the freezer.

      Even with corporate data, trade secrets, confidential documents, etc. that applies. If security that makes *required* access to such data impractical, that's too much.

      Let's Encrypt isn't, and has *never* been about providing a high level of data integrity/non-repudiation for web data.

      Rather, it's intended to encrypt (odd how that's in the name and everything) web data to make it *harder* to eavesdrop upon while in-transit.

      Please do respond. I'd be interested to discuss this with you further -- specifically this idea that "security is binary." How did you come to that conclusion?

      --
      No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
      • (Score: 0, Troll) by fustakrakich on Thursday March 05 2020, @11:57PM (1 child)

        by fustakrakich (6150) on Thursday March 05 2020, @11:57PM (#967162) Journal

        By your logic, my deadbolt is useless and I shouldn't bother locking my door at all.

        Well, by my logic, if the deadbolt is made of paper mache, or if it's a black box that pops open when an airliner flies over the house [we remember our old electric garage doors] it does little more than look nice.

        --
        La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2020, @04:16PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2020, @04:16PM (#967481)

          Troll?

          Why do people get so defensive when somebody tells them they bought snake oil?

          They pushed out a system that's not ready for prime time, and it might not ever be.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2020, @05:18AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2020, @05:18AM (#967291)

        I am not arguing either way but your argument is not half as smart as you think and makes it stupider than it probably is. Security is not provided by the bolt on your door. Security is provided by the idea that police will consider it a grave criminal act to break that bolt and won't take you seriously if the door wasn't bolted. It is easier if you think you were living in a jungle. That bolt would show intent and intelligence of the thief if the bolts are undone and give you information whether you should spend energy in tracking it, or not.

        No really! People who live in jungle bury it in the ground and guard the information about the location, not the location itself.

        As I said, I am not arguing either way about the original topic but against the example you chose.

        • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday March 06 2020, @06:27AM

          I'll ignore your obnoxious and insulting tone for the moment, as I smack your ridiculous "argument" down.

          GP stated that "security is binary."

          His point was that either something is secure, or it isn't and there are no gradations in security. To wit, if something isn't *completely* secure, it is completely *insecure* and therefore useless.

          That, much like your "argument," is ridiculous on its face.

          The example of my door is actually an *excellent* one.

          The deadbolt lock certainly doesn't completely prevent someone from breaking into my apartment. But it most certainly stops someone from walking up to my door, turning the knob and walking right in or jimmying the lock.

          The police have exactly *zero* to do with it. Not that I would count on them anyway. They're generally worse than useless.

          One would need to bring a lock pick, a drill, a battering ram or other tools to either remove the lock or the door to gain entrance. And once they take the time to break into the lobby of my apartment building (also locked), they'd need to take the time to forcibly enter my apartment, likely making lots of noise at all points and alerting the 50+ people in the building to their presence.

          That significantly raises the difficulty factor in entering my home. Is it perfectly secure? No. However, it's an *effective* mechanism for keeping unwanted folks out, and with that deadbolt, someone seeking to obtain *someone's* belongings or do harm to someone would need to expend significant effort to do so. Making that deadbolt (without any help from the po-po) quite useful.

          As such, unless I am being *specifically* targeted, someone going to such lengths is extremely unlikely. And if I am being specifically targeted, there are much easier ways to gain access to my home.

          As such, in the case of my door, security is most certainly *not* binary.

          It's actually really amusing that you call *me* dumb, since not only didn't you understand the point of the example, but you also came up with the moronic bullshit you did. Jungle indeed. Hah!

          I'm actually laughing out loud (at you) as I write this.

          Since you declined to "remain silent and be thought a fool," and rather, "spoke and removed all doubt," to my mild amusement (I am pretty easily amused, so YMMV), thus making my evening more pleasant *at your expense*, I thank you AC.

          Cheers!

          As I proofread my post, I'm moved to laughing *at* you even more, so I decided to include this addendum. Damn you're thick!

          --
          No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
      • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday March 06 2020, @11:47AM

        by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Friday March 06 2020, @11:47AM (#967363) Homepage
        Stop conflating the physical world with the digital world.
        Digital security, at least the PKI part, is supported by mathematical proofs, bits of iron aren't, in fact they come with known breaking points. Totally different realms.
        --
        Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
      • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday March 06 2020, @12:03PM

        by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Friday March 06 2020, @12:03PM (#967368) Homepage
        In the past, not knowing what we know now, could LetsEncrypt certificates be trusted?
        Now, knowing what we now know, should those LetsEncrypt certificates be trusted?
        In the past, knowing what we know now, should LetsEncrypt certificates have been trusted?

        Not all 8 combinations of answers make sense, but I have a response for all of the vaguely sane ones.
        --
        Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday March 05 2020, @08:08PM (2 children)

      by Thexalon (636) on Thursday March 05 2020, @08:08PM (#967071)

      Security is binary. Any value less than 1 is 0.

      No, it isn't.

      The number you want to measure is the amount of time and money needed to break security, and the value of the target. To use the meatspace version, no security is worse than a couple of mall cops is worse than a military base perimeter, but that doesn't mean that there aren't places where a couple of mall cops or even no security at all is appropriate, nor does it mean that a military base perimeter can't be breached by somebody willing to expend a lot of time and effort and money and lives to do so.

      So, for example, I run some tiny websites on a volunteer basis for some non-profits. And there's no sense in spending a huge amount of time or money on those sites' security, because there's no sensitive data on them, and not that much of a problem if I have to shut the sites down completely for a while. By contrast, the websites for 8-figure online businesses I'm responsible for get a lot more of my monitoring and attention.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05 2020, @09:48PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05 2020, @09:48PM (#967115)

        The number you want to measure is the amount of time and money needed to break security, and the value of the target. To use the meatspace version, no security is worse than a couple of mall cops is worse than a military base perimeter, but that doesn't mean that there aren't places where a couple of mall cops or even no security at all is appropriate, nor does it mean that a military base perimeter can't be breached by somebody willing to expend a lot of time and effort and money and lives to do so.

        To expand on this: the value of almost all web traffic, by itself, is approximately zero. This means for most sites, the value of any security system is approximately nothing. Thus, excepting hobbyists who like to tinker with their servers for fun, in most cases you are wasting your time if you spend more than approximately zero minutes securing your website, and you are wasting your money if you spend more than approximately zero dollars on it.

        This essentially the crux of what makes Let's Encrypt so great: it brings the cost of setting up HTTPS on most sites down to somewhere between "nothing" and "bugger all": you just run certbot and you are done.

        Before Let's Encrypt launched most people running webservers would have understood this cost/benefit -- even though they may not have been exactly aware of it. I attended a presentation by Seth Schoen around a year before the launch where he said something like (paraphrasing from memory) "it currently takes about an hour to setup HTTPS on a website, and from asking server administrators why they weren't using HTTPS the answer was it was too much work". Those administrators were not stupid, they were right: it was too much work. They, quite rationally, would have more rewarding things to do with that hour.

      • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday March 06 2020, @11:55AM

        by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Friday March 06 2020, @11:55AM (#967365) Homepage
        This is digital security - you can parameterise it to be as strong as you want. And typically everyone choses "so strong that every CPU or ASIC in the world won't be able to break this for decades, even assuming moore's law continues unabated, except through an unimaginable fluke that wouldn't be expected to happen even in the known life of the universe".

        All costs above more than the amount of resources available are effectively equal to infinity, as there's no test that can be performed that can distinguish them.

        Of course there's the "attacks always improve" caveat, but that's more of an issue for the symmetric side, which tends to be renegotiated via the PKI side often enough that breaks would be very limited in scope, so the cost of the gains for the effort are diminished.
        --
        Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05 2020, @08:20PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05 2020, @08:20PM (#967074)

      Might as well post your billing address and credit card numbers. Since security is binary and there is no 100% system connected to the internet, doing so is won't affect your security level at all. They are probably out there anyway so it isn't even new information for the internet.

      • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday March 06 2020, @11:56AM (1 child)

        by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Friday March 06 2020, @11:56AM (#967366) Homepage
        But we're not talking credit cards, we're talking PKI.
        --
        Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
        • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday March 06 2020, @11:58AM

          by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Friday March 06 2020, @11:58AM (#967367) Homepage
          And a thousand people already have my credit card numbers and my billing address, I hand them out all the fucking time.

          Noone has my private keys.

          Notice the difference?
          --
          Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2020, @07:28AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2020, @07:28AM (#967330)

      Security is binary. Any value less than 1 is 0.

      The IETF would disagree [ietf.org].

  • (Score: 0, Offtopic) by fustakrakich on Thursday March 05 2020, @07:45PM (4 children)

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Thursday March 05 2020, @07:45PM (#967059) Journal

    You're making an unsupportable and, frankly, inane argument

    Yeah, I guess you're right [informationisbeautiful.net]

    --
    La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05 2020, @08:05PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05 2020, @08:05PM (#967070)

      That sites are insecure isn't a question addressed by TFS or TFA.

      What's more, if you connect a device directly to the Internet, you need to assume that, as some point, it will be hacked.

      However, your link and the information within it has nothing to do with the value of HTTPS or Let's Encrypt.

      As such, you're talking out of your ass (again) and it smells that way too.

      I guess our spammy cohort was right:

      [Sung to the tune of Frosty the Snowman [youtube.com]. With apologies to Jack Rollins and Steve Nelson]

      Fusty the moron is a dickless piece of shit
      With an ass that talked and a mouth stuffed with Trump cock
      And the political ideas of a child

      Fusty the moron is a Internet shill, they say He was made of dog shit but the soylentils know
      How he came to troll one day
      There must have been some Trump jizz in That old cock he sucks
      For when he placed it in his mouth He began to talk out of his ass

      Oh, Fusty the moron
      Was a dickhead through and through
      And the soylentils say he could blather fact-free crap
      Just the same as khallow and ari

      Fusty the moron is a dickless piece of shit
      With an ass that talked and a mouth stuffed with Trump cock
      And the political ideas of a child

      Fusty the moron is a Internet shill, they say He was made of dog shit but the soylentils know
      How he came to troll one day
      There must have been some Trump jizz in That old cock he sucks
      For when he placed it in his mouth He began to talk out of his ass

      Fusty the moron
      Knew less and less each day
      So he said, "let's troll
      And I'll be a dickhead
      Now before I'm completely ignored"

      Fusty the moron
      We wish he was on his way
      But he shitposted more and said
      "I won't go away until I prove I'm brain-damaged"

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Thursday March 05 2020, @08:23PM (2 children)

      by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Thursday March 05 2020, @08:23PM (#967076) Homepage Journal

      Please, do explain how encrypting data across the internet is worse than *not* encrypting data across the internet. This ought to be mildly amusing.

      --
      No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
      • (Score: 2, Informative) by fustakrakich on Thursday March 05 2020, @08:42PM (1 child)

        by fustakrakich (6150) on Thursday March 05 2020, @08:42PM (#967084) Journal

        The real simple fatal flaw is trust...

        --
        La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
        • (Score: 3, Informative) by insanumingenium on Thursday March 05 2020, @09:59PM

          by insanumingenium (4824) on Thursday March 05 2020, @09:59PM (#967120) Journal

          The day you, or anyone else writes up a distributed trust model for the web that doesn't have obvious issues, and which my grandmother could realistically use, I will be on that bandwagon. Seriously, I would beat the hell out of that drum.

          Until then I will use the best tools I have available, which is HTTPS/TLS. Suggesting it is useless or simply scrapping it entirely is BONKERS. I get it, centralized trust isn't a perfect model, but it isn't one chosen out of simple ignorance or malice. Yes, the implementation has room to improve, as it has been improving, and will continue to improve. Your thoughts on fixing what is broken would be appreciated, come back when you have some of those.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05 2020, @11:58PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05 2020, @11:58PM (#967164)

    Please, do explain how encrypting data across the internet is worse than *not* encrypting data across the internet. This ought to be mildly amusing.

    Encryption takes up substantially more resources than non-encryption. Beyond the raw data used for encryption itself, it also means that data can't be cached by intermediaries which increases the amount of raw traffic which needs to be sent across the network as well. Additionally, troubleshooting problems becomes much more painful. Plus it increases the operation and maintenance cost of maintaining the website, due to needing to update the certs all the time (or, if nothing else, creating and maintaining a script to do it.)

    It's similar to the reason why GET requests exist in HTTP, not only POST requests.

    If you say, "it's worth it due to preventing Man in the Middle attacks, injection attacks, and everything," then sure, that is a very valid position to take. However, encryption does have a cost and a negative impact as well as a positive impact.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2020, @02:32AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2020, @02:32AM (#967234)

      That's not an argument as to how encrypting is worse than not encrypting web traffic.

      In fact, on the whole, it's an argument in the other direction.

      Just being contrarian or are you brain-addled?

      Inquiring minds aren't interested.