[Cryptography] Encryption opinion

[Stephen Farrell]

On 25/08/14 07:31, Stephan Neuhaus wrote:
> 
> Pervasive HTTPS would indeed be a (part of the) solution to the problem,
> if only because it would no longer be possible to make the stupid
> decision that a site with a self-signed certificate (that fails to
> verify because the browser doesn't have the issuer's cert in its cache
> of trusted roots) is somehow less secure than a site with no certificate
> at all.

With s/HTTPS/TLS/ in the above, I'd fully agree.

What the httpbis WG and afaik browser implementers are working
on is to try keep the MitM-resistance properties of "https" URLs
(i.e. all the same PKI stuff being enforced by the TLS engine)
but to define a way to transport "http" URLs over TLS invisibly
to the user. In the latter case, they'd not barf on expired or
self-signed certs presumably. (The work in progress for that
is [1], and as I think Rich Salz mentioned here before its not
clear which browser implementers will adopt that.)

Cheers,
S.

PS: Note, I'm not saying I agree with all the above, I'm just
reporting what I think is the current state of play.

[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-http2-encryption