this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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Privacy
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You are missing half the purpose of PKI. Identity is equally, if not more, as important as encryption.
Who gives a shit if your password is encrypted if somebody intercepts DNS and sends yourbank.com and makes it go to their own server that’s hosting a carbon-copy of the homepage to collect passwords?
And DNS isn’t the only attack vector for this. It can be done at the IP level by attacks that spoof BGP. It can be done by sticking a single-board computer in a trashcan at a subway stop. Have it broadcast a ton of well-known SSIDs and a ton of phones in the area will auto connect to it and can intercept traffic. Hell, if not for trusted CAs, it’d be very easy to just MITM all the HTTPS traffic anyway.
In reality, you would tofu the first website you went to and not know if it got intercepted or if they just rotated keys (which is also a common security practice and is handled by renewing certificates and part of the reason why publicly-issued CAs are trending down the life of certificates and it’s not a big deal for admins because of easy automation technology. HSTS and cert pinning is more of a PITA but really barely any effort when you consider the benefits of those).
Now, what certificates don’t protect, nor claim to protect, is typosquatting. If you instead go to yorbank.com, that’s on you, and protecting you from a malicious site that happened to buy it is the job for host-based security, web filters, and NGFWs.