EFF's HTTPS Everywhere Detects and Warns About Cryptographic Vulnerabilities 46
Peter Eckersley writes "EFF has released version 2 of the HTTPS Everywhere browser extension for Firefox, and a beta version for Chrome. The Firefox release has a major new feature called the Decentralized SSL Observatory. This optional setting submits anonymous copies of the HTTPS certificates that your browser sees to their Observatory database allowing them to detect attacks against the web's cryptographic infrastructure. It also allows us to send real-time warnings to users who are affected by cryptographic vulnerabilities or man-in-the-middle attacks. At the moment, the Observatory will send warnings if you connect to a device has a weak private key due to recently discovered random number generator bugs."
does it keep track.. ? (Score:5, Interesting)
"It also allows us to send real-time warnings to users who are affected by cryptographic vulnerabilities or man-in-the-middle attacks."
so how does that work? you know who's connected where?
Re: (Score:1)
Welcome to the EFF botnet.
Re: (Score:3)
We can't answer you as we're all busy installing the addon...please hold...
Re:does it keep track.. ? (Score:5, Informative)
so how does that work? you know who's connected where?
When going to an SSL website, your browser submits a copy of the SSL certificate to the EFF's server.
The EFF's server does some sanity checking on the certificate to see if it is from a weak key.
The EFF's server compares the SSL certificate your browser submits with the SSL certificates for the same hostname that the EFF has on file from other users who submitted certificates (or maybe the EFF also tries to connect to the https server themselves).
If the certificate your browser sees is different from what the EFF expects you to see, the browser plugin displays a nasty warning to the end user.
Of course, I expect that 99% of end users will still click OK, let me connect anyways despite all the security problems!
Re: (Score:3)
So, similar in effect to the "multiple views" or "notaries" method of validation (a là Perspectives / Convergence). How do you know this is what HTTPS Everywhere is doing? I wondered about it and wasn't able to find any information on it, includi
Re: (Score:2)
> Nope, I expect that 99% of end users will not have this extension ...
> installed in the first place
You might be wrong. It's been, surprisingly, a very popular plugin even for non-technical folks. At least from what I see. But do your part anyway and install it on people's machine's whenever you get the chance to.
Re:does it keep track.. ? (Score:5, Informative)
you know who's connected where?
Great question. If you have Torbutton installed, the Decentralized SSL Observatory will use Tor to submit the certs via an anonymized HTTPS POST, and warnings (if there are any) are sent back through the Tor network in response.
If you don't have Torbutton, you can still turn on the SSL Observatory, in which case the submission is direct. The server does not keep logs of which IPs certs are submitted from, though this is of course less secure than using Tor.
Before you can turn the Observatory on, we have a UI that tries to explain all of this elegantly and succinctly, in language that even not-super-technical users can understand.
The original design document is here: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/HTTPSEverywhere/SSLObservatorySubmission
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't seem able to turn on the Observatory in Chrome OS.
Re: (Score:2)
Hey Peter...thank you and the rest of the folks at the EFF for such great and important work! Beer's on me if we ever run into each other! :-)
Re: (Score:2)
okays, thanks for the response. tor makes sense for this perfectly, I guess it's as good solution as one can get now, it's probably not feasible to mirror the entire repo to local.
Re: (Score:2)
"It also allows us to send real-time warnings to users who are affected by cryptographic vulnerabilities or man-in-the-middle attacks."
so how does that work? you know who's connected where?
When I first added it to Chrome, it kept "going off" whenever I went to my Blogspot.Com blog. It has stopped now.
Re:I'm confused (Score:5, Informative)
No, they come with pre-trusted cert authorities. And any cert authority can issue a certificate for any domain. So, if somebody "convinces" Verisign to give them a cert for facebook.com, that's it, they are now facebook.com as far as every browser is concerned.
In fact, sites like Facebook and Google change their certs so often (probably due to load-balancing or the simple challenge of synchronizing a certificate over a global set of datacenters), it's practically a full-time job keeping track of whether this "new" cert is valid or not.
Re: (Score:2)
Updating a cert over 100 servers is not hard. Doing so over 10000 servers is no harder, but it takes longer for the script to run though the list. You did run this as a scripted batch update, right? You aren't logging into each server manually, right?
Re: (Score:2)
Well yeah, you could do that. Or, since literally no browser warns about changed certificates in their default configuration, you could just do whatever is easiest.
Re:I'm confused (Score:5, Informative)
Don't web browsers already come with pre-known public keys/certs to detect Man-In-The-Middle attacks?? I like the HTTPS everywhere part but I don't get why this is useful or needed as of today...
I've read of 3 successful attempts to get fake "Bank of America" certs. One was a cert for "Bank of America\0My Phishing Site", and browers would stop at the null and accept it. One was simply an email request with forged headers to the CA, who responded with a BoA cert without double-checking the origin of the request. One was signed by one of the now-bogus CAs while most browers hadn't yet updated with awareness of that bogosity.
And those are just the ones I've read about.
CAs are simply no longer the "trusted 3rd party" needed to prevent MitM attacks. EFF is trying to fill that void, and I'm sure that will work well for a while!
Re: (Score:2)
Proof that social engineering is how security fails. It's not the techs to blame. It's the executives ... the dishonest rich.
Re: (Score:2)
DO you have a source that backs up that outlandish claim?!
Re: (Score:2)
And listening a bit further
"he was like ssl, yeah I haven't throught about that in a long time. and he was like amazing ..... Oh these certificate authorities whats the deal with them...oh that whole authenticity thing yeah we just threw that in at the end...he was like ssl yeah I mean we were really designing it to prevent passive attacks, the whole man in the middle thing someone told us about that and you know we just kind of threw that thing in at the end, really that whole certificate authority thing i
Part of latest TOR release (Score:1)
One more recipient of (part of) my browser history (Score:2)
So to enable this feature, you basically have to tell them when you visit a site over SSL. Good thing it's the EFF, because we're spreading our browsing history every which way as it is. Phishing detection, WOT, sometimes the browser vendors themselves, not to mention all the ads, cookies and trackers. But I guess the people who are likely to install HTTPSEverywhere know how to protect themselves against the last three (AdBlock+, Ghostery, NoScript, etc).
CJ
Re: (Score:3)
Good thing it's the EFF, because we're spreading our browsing history every which way as it is.
Your ISP knows all about you, and your family, and what the cat looks at while you are away.
Just in case you didn't think the tinfoil was tight enough.
--
BMO
Re: (Score:2)
Your ISP knows all about you, and your family, and what the cat looks at while you are away.
No they don't, because my cat and I are using SSL :)
CJ
Re:One more recipient of (part of) my browser hist (Score:4)
They know where your encrypted packets are going. That is, unless you also encrypted the destination IP address (and if that's so, then I know where your packets are going).
Re: (Score:2)
So? They cannot legally do anything with it, and there is no way they can be legally compelled to perform espionage without a warrant.
Re: (Score:1)
So? They cannot legally do anything with it, and there is no way they can be legally compelled to perform espionage without a warrant.
You have just blown my mind. You are right, of course, it is only the people who can legally do things with the information that scare me.
Re: (Score:3)
Seems like some perfectly reasonable paranoia, assuming everyone is out to get you all the time. The powers that be can't do much without actually charging you with a crime.
Re: (Score:2)
So? They cannot legally do anything with it, and there is no way they can be legally compelled to perform espionage without a warrant.
Legally compelled? Hell, they will do it voluntarily and in return the powers that be will grant them retroactive immunity for their criminal actions. I've seen it happen!
Re:One more recipient of (part of) my browser hist (Score:5, Informative)
The TOR browser bundle includes this change (because the HTTPS-everywhere addon auto-updates, IIRC). For those who opt in, the EFF will know far more about their browsing history then their ISP.
Of course, if you don't trust the EFF's claims that it will be anonymized, I'm not sure why you'd trust the anonymity of TOR, but that's a different topic.
Re: (Score:2)
Your ISP knows all about . . . what the cat looks at while you are away.
http://barelyferal.tumblr.com/ [tumblr.com]
Re: (Score:2)
>barely feral
Oh dear gawd.
--
BMO
Good (Score:2)
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
I want a browser extension to record and track my connections into a centralized database. It's for my own benefit, you see.
Well, it's only the https connections, and your ISP and the TLAs already have that.
I would trust the EFF more than I would trust google, omniture, doubleclick, comscore (which slashdot uses), etc.
Re: (Score:2)
Donate. (Score:5, Insightful)
The list of people who both care about the non-commercial interests of an end user and are technically proficient to do something about it is pretty small.
What, no auto-updates? (Score:2)
You'd think that somebody coming out with version 2 of a security-sensitive browser extension would deploy it in a manner that would ensure auto-updates. I searched in the Chrome Web Store and there was no sign of this. You have to install it directly from their website. That means that it won't auto-update, and I need to remember to install/maintain it on every Chrome profile I have (no auto-syncing).
I'd rather not have to guess or check whether any particular browser I'm using has the extension install