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So, I know its been a bit quiet here, but we're working through getting through the last few items relating to cutting over to newer infrastructure. As such, its been working through the bug list, and there's one issue I want to get some feedback on.
Back in November when the infrastructure was upgraded to Ubuntu 22.04, a few users with older devices stopped being able to connect to SoylentNews. This confused me, since we've been using the same NGINX SSL termination setup that has been in use since at least 2016. Well, I finally found the root cause, and as it turns out, Canonical bumped up the minimum OpenSSL security level, which disabled several ciphers, and broke devices not supporting TLS 1.2 or later.
By testing the site with the SSL Labs site checker, it appears anything older than Android 4.0, or iOS 5 is broken. This mostly seems to be devices that are over a decade old at this point, and won't be able to browse the vast majority of sites on the Internet as is. We discussed this internally a bit, and I'm of the opinion that its not worth re-enabling the older ciphers to allow these devices to reconnect, especially since we're working to modernize the stack, and get it as up to date as we can get it. I also believe we had very few users who were actually affected by this, however, as the editors did get a few emails about SN breaking after the site upgrade, I wanted to poll the community, and make sure this is not a more widespread issue than initially believed.
Ultimately, this is going to be part of a broader discussion on what we will and won't support on SoylentNews going forward, and this seems as good of place as any to get the ball rolling.
~ NCommander
(Score: 4, Informative) by mth on Wednesday July 05 2023, @11:18AM (4 children)
Even if the information is public, using HTTPS is still useful because it prevents the content from being tampered with. With plain HTTP for example a greedy ISP could insert ads into sites or a malicious WiFi access point could insert misinformation or exploits into the requested data.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 05 2023, @01:43PM (1 child)
Additionally, if an attacker can intercept and decipher some of your traffic, said attacker can gain insights and data that might enable him to capture the rest of your data. Every nougat of intel on the target makes the target easier to defeat.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday July 05 2023, @02:21PM
Well, with http, no "s", no deciphering needed- we're handing it to them. Again, seems like wiretapping to me.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday July 05 2023, @02:19PM
Yes, thanks. After I posted above I saw AC's comment about ISP (mostly ad) injection, and then I remember that had become a big problem many years ago. As I commented below, that injection seems like illegal wiretapping.
(Score: 3, Informative) by SomeGuy on Wednesday July 05 2023, @06:19PM
As someone who browsers with older browsers, I sometimes come across sites that attempt to load because they support older encryption. But then they crap out as they try to load thousands of advertising links. It the ADVERTISERS who want high levels of encryption.
A long time ago, there actually used to be ad blockers that would interceppt and alter HTTP traffic before it got to a browser. There are still malicious networks that try to insert advertising in to HTTP traffic (and they should be considered nothing less than that - absolutely malicious. Never something that should be put up with).
You know damn well if broken encryption was to become common enough, some even more corrupt than usual ISP would start inserting their own advertisements in place of existing ones.