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Firefox SSL-Certificate Debate Rages On
BobB-nw points out the ever more raucous debate over the way Firefox 3 handles self-signed certificates. The scary browser warnings have affected a number of legitimate sites (such as Google AdWords and LinkedIn) that didn't renew certs in time. Lauren Weinstein loudly called attention to the problem early in July. "If you visit a website with either an expired or a self-signed SSL certificate, Firefox 3 will not show that page at all. Instead it will display an error message... To get past this error page, users have to go through four different steps before they can access the website, which from a usability standpoint is far from ideal. This way of handling websites with expired or self-signed SSL certificates is bound to scare away a lot of inexperienced users, no matter how legitimate the website is."
As long as I get my awesome bar, I'll put up with anything.
...one step back. *sigh*
Isn't scaring away inexperienced users from sites with questionable security the whole point of those warnings?
I mean a user friendly message that lets someone get past it really easily wouldn't exactly get the job done.
With all the sites out there just looking to steal information from you, and to introduce Cross-Site scripting elements, this is a good idea. I want my browser to warn me when I'm going into uncertain territory. And if a website owner screwed up and did not renew their certs--to hell with them. We're supposed to accept a security risk because they couldn't get off their asses as renew? I don't think so.
Certificates are a usefull tool if used properly. Expired or self-signed certs have no value, one would expect admins to have the minimum awareness (professionalism?) to maintain them correctly? Or is even that too much to ask?
I have a bit of a mixed opinion of this - Certainly it's useful on untrusted websites... but I often have to use firefox with various exchange webmail servers... All using self-signed certificates. It gets slightly annoying... But at the same time, I'd rather be asked about accepting self-signed certificates than not... Perhaps Something similar to the IE7 warning page is in order?
So, major sites fail at keeping correct, valid, up-to-date certs. Firefox (legitimately) refuses to say the site is properly identified and that's Firefox's fault...?
Yes, this is a change in behaviour, but in the long run it will force certs to mean something.
http://blog.johnath.com/2008/08/05/ssl-question-corner/
Try going to multiple Linksys devices (WRT54Gs come to mind) with the same self-signed certificate.
This is what you'll see:
You have received an invalid certificate. Please contact the server administrator or email correspondent and give them the following information:
Your certificate contains the same serial number as another certificate issued by the certificate authority. Please get a new certificate containing a unique serial number.
(Error code: sec_error_reused_issuer_and_serial)
You'll only be able to set up an exception for the first one, the rest of them... so sorry so sad... unless you manually dump the certificate each time.
FF2 did not have this "feature", you could set multiple exceptions and not have to worry about it again.
Total PITA if you're working with residential users.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
We already had a debate on that topic .
Why is this anything of a problem? Can't people use one of the free signing authorities out there?
Why UNIX?
If you EVER want to combat man in the middle attacks and phishing sites, this is the best solution. Sites whining that people are being scared away??!? Get a fucking grip, and get a real certificate from a real certificate authority so your users can actually trust you. People/companies are cheap and lazy, and unfortunately this leads to a whole host of problems...keeping your certificate legitimate and up to date should be no different than taking care of your insurance or other critical infrastructure.
I'm curious as to why no one has created an extension which cures this. Sure, only the folks who need it will use it, but if there's this much hullabaloo about it, why doesn't someone do something about it?
I would, but I lack the know-how.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
So like I went to a website, and the computer goes like *beep* and like I get a screen about a certificate or something where I like click Next, Next, Next, OK, and then the computer goes like *boop* and like, my paper was totally gone.
Sorry folks, given the way SSL certs work, there's something going on when someone has a self-signed cert. Users, sadly, have to be aware of this sort of thing. The personal computer really isn't a toaster (yet).
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Obviously, self signing is meaningless for anonymous strangers. It works just fine for you and your friends/colleagues, but not for anyone outside your immediately trusted group.
What are the free alternatives to VeriSign's hefty fees? Some kind of community effort to create trust, much like PGP key signing seems like it would be a good solution.
Besides being expensive, it looks like any shmo can register with verisign and then conduct all sorts of questionable practices behind their cert. It doesn't look like there's any sort of vetting in the process. I didn't complete the signup process, but it looked like once they had my money, they'd send me a certificate. While the connection is secure, that doesn't tell me a darn thing about what they are going to do with my data, or weather or not they're going to try something malicious.
This one's tricky. You have to use imaginary numbers, like eleventeen... --Hobbes
Some guy on some blog somewhere seconds another blog post.
If Google and LinkedIn didn't care about the message, why should you?
Plugin incompatibility, unsupported flash, java shennanigans, the 32/64 bit crapfest, have fun trying to get a java vpn client working... Under ubuntu with AMD64 you need to run a 32 bit version of the firefox2 browser and java 5 to get the most popular java based vpn client on the planet to work.
Flash is simply BROKEN. I'm not blaming firefox for this one. The easiest workaround is to run firefox.exe from wine.
Fundamentally, the people at fault here are the so-called professionals who allow their certificates to expire. Why should I trust their site's security if they can't manage a simple administration function like that. Thawte and Verisign provide you with enough reminders that your certs are about to expire, so you don't even need to diarise it yourself.
I do have more sympathy with self-signed certificates.There is no excuse for corporates to be using them, but for small, non-profit sites, self-signed is understandable. Mozilla could help this situation by providing support for CACert and similar organisations, by including their signing certs in their browsers, by default.
Conditioning the users to accept self-signed certs is a BAD thing.
I think self-signing is great for HTTP and with SSH-style leap of faith. But self signed is far less useful than a real cert (because even when social engineered, a real cert allows you to say "registrar X f-ed up".) for HTTPS. And conditioning users to accept self-signed certs for HTTPS is a mistake.
Test your net with Netalyzr
This way of handling websites with expired or self-signed SSL certificates is bound to scare away a lot of inexperienced users, no matter how legitimate the website is.
Well that's the point. The certificate is not valid and there is no way to tell the website is legitimate. If one would insist on using TLS/SSL for HTTP with a self-signed certificate, have users install your own CA keys you gave them through another secure channel, or at least let them check the fingerprint. Nobody keeps you from doing that. It's sad that some of these things are so widely misunderstood that it actually reduces privacy and security:
The new behavior of Firefox 3 is not a problem, it's people failing to security-enable their website the right way.
This way of handling websites with expired or self-signed SSL certificates is bound to scare away a lot of inexperienced users, no matter how legitimate the website is.
And the ways used by other browsers will not scare people even if the site is illegitimate. Great security model!!
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
This is a switch of the "Cancel/Allow" Mac/PC ad.
Here we have FF3 saying
"You have tried to access a secure site with a dodgy certificate, Cancel or Allow?"
IE meanwhile troops on regardless giving a better "user experience"
Oh until the machine goes down because the site was a trojan site using a self-signed certificate.
The issue here isn't that Firefox is making this hard, its that ANYONE ever made this easy. If a site has an expired certificate then that would worry me as it implies their IT support is a bit dodgy. If someone wants my credit card details and is using a self-signed certificate then I'm VERY worried.
There are functional issues (the duplicate cert problems of Linksys has been mentioned here) that should be addressed. But the basic problem of warning users very strongly that a site is self-signed or has an expired certificate is a good thing.
I'm using Firefox, I'm on a Mac and this problem just hasn't irritated me the way that Vista does because this does it when there is a REAL problem caused by a 3rd party, not a potential problem caused by me hitting a button. Expired or self-signed certs are a real 3rd party problem, not a scare story.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
As a Safari user, i find that reading mainstream media and "security researchers" fucking hurts my head.
First Safari is bad because it doesn't have anti-phishing.
Then FireFox is bad because because it throws a fit on un-signed certificates.
WTF do they all recommend? Exploder?
I guess it all fits with the flow of uneducated American populace, too ignorant to learn to use a computer properly, so "Security Experts" need to be babysitting them.
(for those of you wondering why I use Safari, it's because of its superb in page find feature.)
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Java based VPN Client? OMG.
I think FF should just clearly show a warning sign and tell the user that any communication he or she has is encrypted, but that the receiver could be anyone. Therefore the user should not engage in any sensitive communication over this connection such as visiting banks etc.
I feel that there is too much scaremongering going on. Usually programs will tell you, "you are about to do something really dangerous/stupid/embarasing, proceed yes or no?". It is better to inform the user why this is dangerous/stupid/embarasing and let him or her make up their own mind. Otherwise you are just putting the blame on the user for when things go wrong without him/her being able to make an informaed decision. Many users may act less than perfect, but at least give them a chance to understand.
Yes I know that the new FF is much better at informing the user than older browsers where, but it is still too alarmist in my opinion.
What do you think?
She made the willows dance
The new Firefox behavior is probably the right choice for sites on the public Internet. However, it's hell when dealing with embedded devices. Many network devices offer an HTTPS management interface, and almost all use a self-signed certificate. Some offer the option to install a "real" certificate, but many don't. Even if the option is available, it's only really usable by organizations with their own internal Public Key Infrastructure. Firefox needs a better way of dealing with routers, switches, webcams, etc.
The key sequence to access my Slashdot bookmark in Firefox is Alt-B-S. I don't believe this is a coincidence.
Let's complain about how easy it is for you to navigate to a malicious page in IE and get malware on your PC.
Seriously people, this isn't a huge deal. Err on the side of security rather than the other side, I would say.
I think Firefox's solution is the best we can hope for. If you or me can get a self-signed cert, a phishing site author certainly can. Then all of a sudden if Firefox were to accept self-signed certs, phishing sites over HTTPS look legitimate, and they look the same as every other HTTPS site that shelled out $$$ to get their certs signed by a trusted root authority. Hell it doesn't even cost $$$, there are a few root authorities that'll sign certs for free, and one is accepted by Firefox (I forget the name). So that's always an option. If you don't like adding exceptions to your own pages, get on Google and figure out how to fix it!
Plugin incompatibility, unsupported flash, java shennanigans, the 32/64 bit crapfest, have fun trying to get a java vpn client working... Under ubuntu with AMD64 you need to run a 32 bit version of the firefox2 browser and java 5 to get the most popular java based vpn client on the planet to work.
Flash is simply BROKEN. I'm not blaming firefox for this one. The easiest workaround is to run firefox.exe from wine.
What's wrong with running the 32 bit version of Firefox on a 64 bit OS?
http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/07/my-browser-needs-16-exabytes.html
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
SSL Certificate hijacking is a real issue so it should not be underestimated. Users should not be able to just dismiss a warning dialog like they can do with IE. However I do think self signed certs shouldn't be discriminated this way. Learn more with presentation #11 here:
http://www.securitypresentations.com/#11
Firefox is not alone in it's new Robot "Warning will robinson" type of messages...Internet Explorer does this as well. Pick on them both over it will ya?
"My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
Before all the security fanatics start telling everyone to "just spend ten bucks on a cert"...
1. Embedded appliances (you know, the hundreds of millions of routers, firewalls, etc.) cannot use an authority cert. The choice is between self-signed and no encryption only, and Firefox is pushing manufacturers towards the less secure option.
2. Typically, you first encounter a self-signed cert in a secure context (for example, setting up such an appliance by plugging it directly into your PC and visiting the web interface). After that, all you care about is whether the cert changes. The whole man-in-the-middle thing is NOT a guaranteed problem with self-signed certs.
3. Real cert authorities are not the invulnerable swiss banks everyone thinks they are. They can and have issued certs when they shouldn't have. And that isn't just new certs; last week there was a story about a Firefox-trusted cert authority that issued a Microsoft live.com domain cert to someone. So those who think authority certs are secure are deluding themselves.
In the end, Firefox's current behavior does not promote security; it simply makes life hard and annoying for legitimate users.
If you need to run a lot of SSL'd sites, do the following and become your own Certificate Authority:
1. Make a CA cert
2. Import your CA cert into your browser
3. Make certs for all the sites you need to sign
4. Sign them with your own personal CA
5. All browsers you administer stop complaining about your sites
6. (optional) Get your CA cert included in the standard list that the various flavors of Linux, Firefox, Apple and Microsoft use and start selling certs to people over the internet (doing proper identity verification first).
7. Profit
Besides, 4 separate dialogs are more likely to make the people who blindly click to make dialog boxes go away perhaps actually read them first. Or maybe less likely to read them, who can say?
If you can't do it right why use SSL at all? There is no debate here, just another flame war.
I'm going to assume that there is a sizable minority here who doesn't actually understand what is going on with SSL certificates and why they are important. So here goes:
Assume you're trying to access your online bank, and that Dr Evil is your ISP's systems admin (or anyone else who can get between you and your bank).
In the normal course of things, your web browser makes an SSL connection to your bank, validates the certificate is signed by one of the certificate authorities that your browser trusts and you're good to go.
The certificate authority check is there to prevent Dr. Evil from setting up a server in between you and your bank. In that scenario, you would connect to Dr Evil, get his key, encrypt your username and password using his key. Dr Evil then decodes the user/password and sends it onto the bank in another connection. Then he bridges the two connections, walks off with your password and you're none the wiser.
Because of SSL certificates, if Dr Evil did try it, you'd get the nasty certificate warning, and hopefully not give Dr Evil your banking passwords.
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
My thoughts exactly.
What's next, a payroll system written in vbScript?
which is the problem here.
FF2 had a warning message about self-signed certificates, too. The problem in my opinion is the way it is presented, and how the "exception" thing is handled from a user perspective.
In FF2, you simply had to accept the certificate, and "go" for it. So far so good. Warning message, "OK, I know what I'm doing".
Downside: anyone just klicks "yes" in ANY message, so where's the security in that?
Anyway, with the new scheme, it's simply annoying, even if you know what you are doing. I.e. I need to use some development installations of software for testing purposes, and of course, whe have to test the ssl-encrypted parts, too. Buying certificates for all this development setups would be stupid (like, throwing the money out of the window).
Why do I have to click FOUR times to simply say "this site is OK for me", while I only have to click once for popups, for auto-fillin for login data, and so on?
Just one simple "add an exception" that does the trick WITHOUT forcing me to:
- *manually* (!!!) FETCH and DISPLAY the certificate before I can accept it (hell, I KNOW it's valid, I generated it myself! And a "normal user" can't understand ANYTHING in the certificate details, so what's the point? And no, they won't "learn", either!) ...
- yes, I'm sure, I want an exception
- yes, for real, I
amen. The error message seems to be designed for people who know about these things, not mom and pop users.
Mom and pop users should never, ever go to a website with self-signed or expired certs. It's true that there a lot of legitimate sites that fit the category, it might even be true that most of the self-signed sites are legit. The problem is that mom and pop users are not savvy enough to distrust anything, unless there's a big fat warning there.
Firefox 3 allows you to permanently accept those certificates. If you're computer literate enough to know about these things, you whitelist those sites. If you're a mom and pop user, you call a tech savvy family member / friend / neighbor / neighbor's kid to vouch the site for you and whitelist it.
What the heck is wrong with mozilla? Everybody knows convenience of web developers is more important than actually making the whole SSL stuff worth it. Who cares if allowing sites to sign their own certificates makes the whole SSL thing extremely pointless? What's important here is the webmasters' comfort.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Are there similar organizations with reasonable security though? CAcert certainly hasn't and including them in Mozilla would be particularly bad due to this. Other free alternatives would be nice, but lacking that, $15 for a year for a cert isn't beyond the reach or any non-profit.
So I went to the site of Verisign and you know who signed the cert? That's right, Verisign itself. And Firefox simply accepts this(no self-signed warning)! Outrageous, that's all I can say!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
1) FireFox3's handling of expired/selfsigned certificates is proper.
2) If you regularly visit a site that has an expired certificate, you can easily add it to the exception list, which is leagues better than how FF2 handled it.
People need to get and maintain proper certs, it's as simple as that. Not displaying a scary warning about a self-signed cert would be worse than a short but descriptive error message warning users of a potential security risk.
It's almost as if he didn't see the BlackHat talk about how running a VPN client within a browser is the worst idea ever.
How about only bringing up information about the certificate when information is/can be submitted to the website. And then for pages where something does need to be submitted simply telling the user in a popup,
"This page uses a self signed certificate while this keeps communication with the server secure it does not in any way validate the server is legitimate."
or maybe,
"This server uses self signed certificates this is like asking someone on the street if they can be trusted to tell you their name correctly the good and the bad will all say 'yes'."
and one more,
"This server uses a self signed certificate. This will provide a secure connection to the server though the only assurance of the server's identity is being given by the server itself and not a (trusted?) 3rd party."
(Mozilla if you are reading this feel free to use them :)
The problem for me as a site developer is that my company self-signs a lot of certificates for our test servers as several of our clients have requested that the test server behave exactly like the production server (which, in fact it probably should if you want to get into it).
So, now that Firefox has made it extremely painful for me to test my SSL test sites; I don't. Just think about that when you complain that a site looks like s in firefox.
... It's the wording that is used. They should just present the information. Some people have a good reason to use self-signed certificates. Stating that the certificate is invalid for this reason is a bit extreme. It's not that big of a deal to add it, and I think putting this information in the user's face is a Good Thing[tm]. Calling perfectly valid certificates invalid is not the right thing, however.
Ok. $150 a year might not be extortion in your mind for a few lines of bytes and very little, if any, actual verification of who you are.
I'll assume for the moment that $150 a year is good value for money.
But why the HELL do they charge an absolute FORTUNE for wildcard SSL certificates (*.mydomain.com)? Is it any extra work for them?
No. Pure profiteering.
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
We really need CA cert to be added to firefox by default, they need to have representatives from each side meet up and see if there can be some common middle ground in regards to differences in policy and procedure.
CA certs current policy is 95% there, if mozilla can come to the party in any way, we might get somewhere.
The current default certificate authorities were just imported carte blanche from netscape with zero consideration of what should be in the list and why.
They appear to have a policy now, but it doesn't quite meet with CAcerts own.
I just don't believe that we can get there, and given publicity and the right people making it a priority it will happen, but there's a big flaming circus hoop in the way, its called superfluous politics.
Please, vbscript is do passé!
Write it in PowerShell, duh!
Who cares if allowing sites to sign their own certificates makes the whole SSL thing extremely pointless?
Except it doesn't, any more than the lack of a revenue structure for the likes of Verisign makes SSH pointless. If an unsigned certificate *changes*, then that should raise red flags, but just using an unsigned certificate? That shouldn't do more than warn you that you're visiting a site using an unsigned certificate and offer to add it to your keychain.
IMHO, the current handling of certificates by Firefox is wrong. I doubt that the Firefox developers have thoroughly discussed the issue*. It's sad to say, but the current handling seems like a copycat from IE.
What the Firefox folks don't seem to get is that in practice there are 3 types of certificates. Each type has a different usage scope. The user interface of Firefox should make clear the scope of each type, not the type itself.
Currently Firefox discriminates only between 1 and 2. They don't actually have a different presentation for 3. They only display this misleading screen. As soon as you accept the certificate, self signed certificates are hard to tell apart from type 2 certificates.
I think that it is necessary to add a third type of certificates in Firefox to accomodate self-signed certificates. For this new type a separate color should be used in the address bar. Orange would be probably a good choice: it doesn't scream danger like red but isn't either assuring like green (type 1 certificates) or blue (type 2 certificates). A warning screen should also be present, but it should use more mild language. It should also be easier to bypass.
* Hint: If they are really scared of the self-signed certificates, why do they have the "Permanently store this exception" box checked by default?
I cant believe how much support for this there is on a site like this. What happened to a free and open internet? Is it only allows to be free and open to the consumers of the internet, not the producers?
I run a small web server for myself and the people in my life. It's not a business and I don't make any money off of running it. I want to be able to encrypt data that I am sending back and forth. Why do I have to increase my operating costs 10 fold by buying a certificate from a "Firefox approved" CA just to allow my uncle joe in timbucktoo to view my website.
I will hold myself accountable to make sure the security on my site is up to snuff. I not asking for credit card numbers, or sin numbers from anyone. I know thats not good enough for a random stranger, but it is quite sufficient for my use case.
I'm a big fan of encryption but I laugh at everyone that wants to tell me that this kind of warning adds the slightest bit of security.
During my work as a sysadmin the last 10 years I have worked with lots of ssl certificates and gotten many of them signed for a huge sum of money.
Not ONCE there was a check if the certificate details were right or completely made up. What's the point of using a signed certificated when anyone can create a certificate that can fake your identity? - There is none!
That's why I don't like this "feature" at all and would like to see it removed. All it adds is a lot of extra work without the slightest benefit.
It really shouldn't be an issue whatsoever.
Self-signed certificates are not secure!!
If your web site uses them, then you are not secure.
If you're going to self-sign your certs, why are you even bothering with SSL in the first place?
It's really astounding that people think self-signed certs are a good idea.
Do you even know what SSL is for?
Kriston
After reading a couple of dozen comments I have a strong deja vu feeling.
Did they change something in the Matrix?
How many Average Joes know what SSL Certificates are? /. and to avoid untrusted sites. Someone who doesn't will either get scared or just click next without bothering to find out what it is. Let's look at what wikipedia says about this... I don't think my mother could understand one sentence. And let's face it, she's just trying to get to a website and pay my debt to a bank in Nigeria, FAST, she'll ignore any warnings because she's been told to do that in the email message she got this morning. Or: she's just trying to login to her bank, that's trustworthy so it's OK to ignore the warning. Or: she's just trying to login to a dating site. Having Average Joes recognize fake URLs and understand what a SSL certificate is isn't so simple... They will probably ignore the warning anyway. Nothing stops AJ from achieving his goals!
"They should be educated" you say... I say you're right, they should but they aren't. Someone who knows what SSL is also knows to bitch on
when i criticized it and said it will hurt a lot of small businesses and communities, some people came up with darwinian shit like 'if they are not able to afford a $100 buck a year ssl, they dont deserve to be on the internet anyway'.
and look now, even the biggest can be affected by this overzealous, self righteous implementation in ff3, not only small businesses and communities who are 'so easily forfeitable'.
i wonder what those people have to say now.
Read radical news here
You are using extra ram loading all the 32bit shared libraries that no other programs use. Since memory bottlenecks are the most frequent source of slowdowns on a modern computer, your computer gets runs slower.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
IE7 has behaved like this since the beginning, and it didn't make it to Slashdot...
Heh, I remember my first "encounter" with this problem, with a user telling me that "webex doesn't work". Well, it turned out that it used a self signed cert, and the user blindingly clicked on the "green button" link, which expressly says "don't go to this web site" (or something, I'm not a IE user anyway). He didn't even read the damn text next to the buttons.
I remeber this one particulary well because in our internal support ticket system, there's a PEBKAC close option. This was the very first ticket which made it to that qualification.
Even IE6 did/does the same, even FF2 did/does the same. Only now it's scarier since IE7, and FF3 seems to have followed this trend. Too bad. But then it's yet another scary warning that people will soon ignore, and then it will be same ole, same ole.
The Slashdot populace is always ready to bash Microsoft and others for their silly security policies (rightfully so, in many cases), which often place convenience ahead of actual security. So why is there suddenly a big debate when Firefox does the right thing and warns users about invalid certificates?
Allowing users to easily get past expired and/or self-signed certificates completely defeats the purpose of certificates. Self-signed certs should ONLY be used for development/debugging purposes, not for production environments.
For production websites, using a self-signed certificate is just an ugly hack to achieve encrypted (but not authenticated!) sessions, and it shouldn't be accepted as such! If you really want encryption without authentication, there are very good alternatives available.
A valid debate would be whether browsers should make it easier to set up an encrypted-but-not-authenticated session, for example by supporting http tunneled through ssh in a user-friendly way. Or maybe we need a whole new protocol for this.
What we SHOULDN'T do is diminish the (imperfect, yet better than nothing) security that the current system provides us for the sake of convenience.
He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
This is why I use IE5.5, security through obscuri
I know using actual evidence is unfashionable, but lets try connecting to a self-signed https page from some popular browsers, shall we?
Firefox 3
Secure Connection Failed
phishing.itsdapead.org uses an invalid security certificate.
The certificate is not trusted because the issuer certificate is unknown.
The certificate is only valid for mycomputer.itsdapead.com
[Or you can add an exception]
Internet explorer 7:
There is a problem with this website's security certificate.
The security certificate presented by this website was not issued by a trusted certificate authority.
The security certificate presented by this website was issued for a different website's address.
Security certificate problems may indicate an attempt to fool you or intercept any data you send to the server.
We recommend that you close this webpage and do not continue to this website.
Click here to close this webpage.
Continue to this website (not recommended).
Or Safari 3:
The certificate for this website was signed by an unknown certifying authority. You might be connecting to a website that is pretending to be "phishing.itsdapead.org" which could put your confidential information at risk. Would you like to connect to the website anyway?
How about Opera 9.5?
The server's certificate chain is incomplete, and the signer(s) are not registered. Accept?
[Help] [Reject] [Approve]
Sorry, I don't believe that - Opera is meant to be good isn't it? Let's try again: (ahem) Opera 9.5?
The server's certificate chain is incomplete, and the signer(s) are not registered. Accept?
[Help] [Reject] [Approve]
Ye gods - I wasn't imagining it! Deary, deary me...
Now, from where I'm standing:
Plus, Firefox is pushing the extended info scheme whereby the certificate holder's name gets displayed on the info bar (as opposed to the old scheme where ploughing through the certificate might reveal the holder's name), which should be a good thing.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
The arrogance implied in some of these responses is astounding. "It's not a problem with Firefox. Everyone else just needs to change how they do things."
There are two problems with the feature:
1) It looks like a broken website and is not intuitive. If you want to make it clear to users that the site is suspect then say so in clear language that they can understand.
2) You can't get it out of the way. This feature alone is going to drive me away from Firefox as an everyday tool because I work all day long with devices that are manufactured with a self-signed cert so this is a pain in the ass until you replace it. Also, I work routinely in environments that set up new applications using self-signed certs for test instances which are often on IP's that don't resolve to the CN, etc. Not every customer has the infrastructure or expertise to run their own CA, the money to purchase trusted certs for thousands of internal devices or the foresight to obtain them before they are needed. The number of clicks is just a major pain in the ass that is making Firefox more irritation than joy.
Just give me something in that lets me choose the old behavior. I *know* enough to be able to distinguish between a bad cert at a supposedly legitimate site and a testing or temporary cert that was shipped with a device or which I just created two minutes earlier. And no, I'd rather not import tons of bogus signing certs into my browser and thereby pollute and clutter up the set of trusted certs. Just let me choose the old behavior thank you very much. Make it easy for me to bypass when I know it should be bogus. Make it easy for me to examine the cert if I am uncertain. One of the fundamental principles of security is that if you make it too hard to understand the controls or too much work to comply with users will find ways to circumvent the mechansim. In this case, circumvention will mean that users become irritated and stop using Firefox which is a net loss to the internet and to internet security.
Now that they make it more obvious that something is wrong with the SSL cert, how am I ever going to get inexperienced people to give me their bank information. Blasted Firefox, *shakes fist* you have ruined retirement plan.
... is to separate out wire encryption from identity validation, and encourage users only to trust web sites which have an EV certificate for secure purposes, while allowing any site to use wire encryption via a self signed certificate.
Most uses of self signed certificates are in situations where no identity validation is required at all. For these purposes, putting up Big Scary Warning Dialogs only serves to discourage people from using encryption where it would be useful. For purposes of verifying identity, only an EV certificate should be trusted. Most users will not thoroughly check the domain name of the site they're visiting to establish that they haven't been redirected to another site via a man-in-the-middle attack and are now viewing a phishing page hosted with a stolen certificate. Having the name of the organization that was issued the certificate in the URL bar is the only way to ensure that users actually check that the certificate belongs to the organization they're trying to interact with.
Needless to say, Safari also needs to get on the EV bandwagon.
The only conlusion is that Verisign now owns Firefox, to aid in its bid for complete control over the internet.
The only signing authority I trust is Entrust (Canadian). They have no intention of controlling all top level domains, unlike Verisign.
Others like Thawte, are regularly used to sign confirmed malware.
Money != security. As an OSS community you should all be fully aware of that.
Whatever happened to CA Cert and their push to get included in Firefox? They were supposed to be the FOSS solution to the whole certificate problem, yet years have gone by with them being no closer to being included as a CA in major browsers.
Sig this!
Plugin incompatibility,
Kind of too vague for me to say anything about. What plugins?
unsupported flash,
Flash works for me. What's the problem?
java shennanigans,
"Shennanigans" encompasses a very broad range of possibilities. Again, what's actually going wrong?
the 32/64 bit crapfest,
To be fair, that's not Firefox's fault. The only thing Firefox has done wrong is to, y'know, actually support 64-bit.
Even in Vista 64-bit, if I recall, there's a 32-bit IE as the default, and a 64-bit IE buried somewhere. Except their 64-bit IE doesn't support Flash, whereas I can run Flash in nspluginwrapper on a 64-bit Firefox on Linux.
have fun trying to get a java vpn client working...
...I've never tried. There are enough good Linux VPN clients (and servers) that I've never felt the need to use a Java-based one.
Under ubuntu with AMD64 you need to run a 32 bit version of the firefox2 browser and java 5 to get the most popular java based vpn client on the planet to work.
Try OpenJDK -- it does provide a 64-bit plugin, if I remember.
And if that doesn't work, is it really Firefox's fault? Or is it Java's? Or maybe even the VPN client itself -- popular as it is, it probably never had to run on a 64-bit Java before.
Flash is simply BROKEN. I'm not blaming firefox for this one. The easiest workaround is to run firefox.exe from wine.
Really? I just typed "sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree", and Ubuntu handled the rest, including the nspluginwrapper hack.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Self-Signed and expired SSL certs are bad. Users clicking through to trust bad certs is worse. Firefox making that practice difficult is good.
If a user runs into a situation where the cert looks wrong they SHOULD NOT be able to easily click through. This doesn't discourage users from using encryption. How likely is it they can work around the encryption error? It discourages them from blithely trusting the untrustworthy.
Since users are not requested to trust every hillbilly ca firefox ships with, this provides a false sence of security
Known CA: hurray, blink blue and go one
Unknown CA: evil, evil, evil, (you need at least 4 clicks (incl. downloading certificate) to go one.
Explicitly defining trust depending for a specific CA (and only trusting a few) more or less a good thing.
But in times, where certificates are created based on (possible spoofed) DNS info (like at least cacert.org or startssl do) trusting all CAs firefox ships with is more harmful than trusting a single self-signed certificate (or certificate issued by an unknown CA)
Imho the firefox GUI must take this into account.
FF is open source.
I will wait a few more weeks before I do this myself. My job requires me to frequently access user HTTP sites that use self signed certs. The additional four clicks are extremely annoying. Yes, I get the point of the warning and it does have its usefulness. One click, or even two would do just fine.
At the very least power users should be able to turn off this security feature in about:config.
All that being said, we need an actually affordable way to purchase REAL certs.
The alternative is:
This way of handling websites with expired or self-signed SSL certificates is bound to let in a lot of inexperienced users, no matter how illegitimate the website is.
Self-signed certs are not always "poor security practices". Consider, for example, devices like the ubiquitous Linksys broadband routers. They support ssl connections for administration, which is probably a good idea (tm).
But signed certs require a domain name, and cost real money (typically $100/year), which is probably a little much for a home user who just wants the extra security on their LAN. So self-signed certs are perfectly reasonable for uses like that.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Shouldnt Non-SSL sites be presented with a big, aweful, 61 click-through screen that informs the user that the site doesnt provide a 'secure' layer of sending information to the user?
Wouldnt communication be safer if such a system was enforced over forcing people to buy verisign ssl certs?
These exceptions aren't temporary. There's no "Let me in once" option, or "remove this exception after a week" option.
You can either browse the website unsecured forever, or you can not browse it at all, ever.
That's just fucking stupid, and negates all benefits of the warnings.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
If you want to put on your tinfoil hat, help yourself, otherwise stay out of my way.
Oh sure.
`usability issue', my ass.
Goodle AdWords, LinkedIn, well, they're big corporations, they can renew their certificates on time.
Serves them right.
Every time a browser tries to be more secure, a bunch of morons says it affects their usability, because it prevents stupid work-arounds to work.
People don't jump on IE each time it does something wrong, does it ?
Heck, firefox3 does something right, for a change, and people complain ?
Give me a break...
Every time you want to use self-signed certificates with HTTPS, just use plain HTTP. They have exactly equivalent security. Encryption without authentication is worthless. Any other expectation is just deluding yourself.
If you can distribute a self-signed certificate securely, then you can also distribute instructions to install the certificate before Firefox ever pops up an error message.
And no, putting the certificate up on your unsecured Web site doesn't count.
There is a way to make the 4 click get a litter cleaner, at least...down to 2 clicks in about:config "browser.ssl_override_behavior user set integer 2" && "browser.xul.error_pages.expert_bad_cert user set boolean true" This should eliminate the extra annoyance!
Yeah but Flash would work. The GP was using Win32 Firefox in wine, which is even worse for library usage.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
My secure webmail site I used had their certificate expire. EVERY single time in FF2 I had to hit the button on that dialog. I prefer the exception method in FF3.
Sure, yes, the certificate expired. Big deal. Not the end of the world. Life goes on, and I'd rather have it encrypted than non-encrypted.
Why doesn't Slashdot ever top-post Firefox's replies:
http://blog.johnath.com/2008/08/05/ssl-question-corner/
Anonymous SSL gives NO security--man in the middle attacks are trivial.
This whole debate is like people complaining that 2+2 does not equal 5.
Grow up and face the boundaries of what you need for security (the first 'S' in SSL, folks).
Although I'm a huge believer in Leap of Faith, I believe it should be used in addition to, not instead of, valid certificates for SSL.
There are just simply too many users "the first time" to any given site for leap-of-faith to be useful.
Especially since your proposed policy ("Always leap-of-faith") would mean ANY conventional phishing site could trivially use SSL and present a nice happy lock icon, because its a NEW site from the browser's viewpoint, even though the user is fooled into thinking its his legitimate bank.
Test your net with Netalyzr
... if you don't update them *and* don't like to see them enforced in the browser??
If you visit a website with either an expired or a self-signed SSL certificate, Firefox 3 will prevent the page from loading, to protect your secure cookies and personal info from what may be a malicious page. Instead it will display a warning... To get past this warning page, users have to go through four different steps before they can be understood to have declared intent to accept the possible consequences, which from a usability standpoint is far from ideal - the users are much more accustomed to signing their death warrants by pressing a single 'Allow' button, so multiple steps for an extremely rare security warning is heretical. This way of handling websites with expired or self-signed SSL certificates is bound to scare away a lot of inexperienced users, who, with their extensive knowledge of cryptography and public key infrastructure, really need not be intimidated with facts and scary words.
This is quite obviously a debate among morons. I'm glad firefox is doing it right.
"Strangers have the best candy" -Me
Easy solution to the expired problem -- just show a different warning on expiration for a pre-defined period of time (say, 3 months). "The site you are accessing, google.com, provides a security certificate that has recently expired. Do you wish to continue?"
It's interesting that for an article a little while ago, there were a lot of comments saying "certs are only for encryption and should not be used to verify sites", but for this one it's all "certs are for verifying sites and should never be used just for encryption".
2 sides of a coin, I guess.
Just my 2 cents.
g2g, bye
Because they don't understand crypto _at all_. You cannot divorce authentication from encryption. Encryption without authentication is worse than useless, because it gives you a _false_ sense of security. Users see the little padlock and go "oh yay, it's secure!" meanwhile they are sending all their bank account information to the Russian mafia via a man-in-the-middle attack with a simple self-signed certificate.
If you want the browser to accept all encryption offers regardless of authentication, fine, go ahead, but then remove all visual cues in the browser that the connection is encrypted. Change the URL to begin with "http" instead of "https", remove the padlock, remove any indication that the connection is secure, _because it's not_.
Do the above and move all the visual "security" cues to be tied to proper authentication. Guess what? You have pretty much the same thing as right now, only you spent thousands of man-hours and caused millions of needless software upgrades to accomplish exactly nothing.
People who rant about Firefox's _proper_ scary enforcement of authentication failures are the same kinds of people who think that they can implement their own home-grown encryption algorithm in a few hours and their software will be "secure", use two-letter database passwords, but think it's fine "because it requires a password", implement RC4 so that it's totally vulnerable to reply attacks, or any other of the myriad of amateur mistakes software developers with _no background in security what so ever_ make on a daily basis, which is a primary reason why software today is so terribly insecure.
Get a freakin clue people. If you aren't trained for security, don't pretend you know anything about it and especially don't complain about reasonable and well thought-out security measures. Also, don't try to add security to your application if you have no idea what you're doing. Either license a commercial encryption toolkit and _pay careful attention to the documentation_, or hire a real security developer to do the security design.
Scratch that, why don't you take a page from Microsoft and actually get some security training instead of pretending like it has nothing to do with you. Microsoft has actually made huge leaps forward in the security of their software since they started forcing developers to take security training. Sadly the rest of the industry is years behind and not really getting better.
Someone is WRONG on the Internet!
When using the services of a CA, if a compromise of keys becomes known, certificates can be centrally revoked. CAs should list an OCSP server in the certificate issued to your server. If they do, and with the OCSP feature enabled in Firefox 3, the revocation will have immediate effect. That way users can be protected from communicating over a potentially compromised channel.
When using a self signed certificate without such infrastructure, you may not know that you are using a compromised channel. You rely on each admin to do that homework on their own, each time a new compromise becomes known.
So I reviewed the articles in the links. I looked at the messages displayed, and personally I think they are great messages. I think it is wise to make the links less pronounced on how to accept self-signed or expired certificates.
End Users today have been made insensitive to EULAs and other pop-ups and just look for Accept or OK buttons to push to get where they want.
Mozilla is right in making the messages as scary as possible, and the ways to approve the potentially bad certificates more cumbersome. End Users really should be required to take classes that teach them about security and how it is there to help them. Web security and safety is not something you should expect everyone and their dog to just know, without having been taught be someone who has at least a bit of a clue. In the end if people were not allowed to use the Internet until they were best safety / security practices trained, there would be a whole lot less of the news stories out there about people who got scammed or had information of theirs compromised because they didn't know better. It seems the world assumes everyone should know better about potential security threats, this of course includes Firefox 3's handling of self-signed certificates.
Just because a website I use is trusted by one of the so called recognized certificate authorities does not guarantee that the secured site is safe to use. So the fact that a tool used to browse websites pops up a scary message whether in a pop-up window or in the actual browser space window is a good thing, it makes me have to take a moment to review the reason it gives me and decide how I will proceed.
If I want to permanently accept the so called bad and scary certificate I can, or I can realize I made a mistake and really didn't want to go the the site.
Education is the key. Mozilla did nothing wrong in my opinion with regards to displaying the messages they display.
PS: I did see the "Legitimate banks, stores, and other public sites would not ask you to do this.". My comments on that are, in a perfect world I would have to go to a bank branch and receive a USB key that gives me a copy of the banks certificate authority certificate, and instructions on how to load that certificate into at least the most current browsers at the time the certificate was issued. It would be my responsibility to add the CA into any browser that there were not specific instructions for.
Regards,
Ryan Pritchard
Fun Extends All Basic Life Expectancies
I wonder how difficult it would be to come up with a "mod_gpg" or something of the sort that would work in tandem with FireGPG or something similar. That might get around both Mozilla's new anti-self-serve-SSL campaign, plus technical problems like virtual hosts on the same IP address...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Many federal departments and agencies use Firefox 2.x on their classified and other autonomous networks where, while authentication is a must, DNS poisoning and pfishing are unlikely threats. If Firefox 3's new nanny could not be suppressed then users of those networks would object to its crying "Wolf!" all the time. Fortunately Firefox designers provided two simple ways to suppress it:
In Tools -> Options -> Security uncheck these boxes:
[ ] Tell me if the site I'm visiting is a suspected attack site
[ ] Tell me if the site I'm visiting is a suspected forgery
Alternatively, in about:config set the following:
browser.safebrowsing.enabled user set boolean false
browser.safebrowsing.malware.enabled user set boolean false
It is annoying, but at the same time it has been forcing me to pay more attention to what I type in the address bar, and make sure what I am typing is correct and taking me to where I actually want to go.
I use linkedin and adsense regularly, however I wouldn't put it past anyone to make a compromising site with a similar domain just one letter off.
Yeah yeah you can say, "well it's fucking google man you don't need to verify that shit" but at the same time I applaud FireFox for doing a good job at supporting a protective feature that again proves their product a more superior one.
Ave Molech Setting
Java VPN client eh? By any chance are you referring to Juniper Network Connect? I know how to get that working, and it has nothing to do with Firefox.
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
My proposition:
- keep a list of most important sites that should never use self-signed key (I'm sure there's no more than few thousand of them)
- keep in history all sites visited by user which used certified key
and if browser notices that website from those 2 lists presents self-signed or invalid key show HUGE warning message about breakin attempt and don't even allow for exception
Otherwise when website presented self-signed key show warning that site is low-security level and standard "allow for this session" and "allow always" buttons.
It's worse than that. Their method of temporarily accepting the certificate is far less obvious now. Instead of it being a single button press, you have to click "Add an exception", which sounds like some sort of permanent change that would require wading through configuration dialogs (or, knowing Firefox, manually editting a file on disk) in order to reverse. If that's not creepy, I don't know what is.
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
As a web developer and UI/UX designer I am shocked at the lack of thought put into this particular function. The reasons for security are one thing, but who the hell designed this crap? The percentage of people who don't read error messages thoroughly are huge. The design of this specific error page leads one to believe from first glance that the site is not reachable at all. Even a better designed page, that has an original look that leads a user to read the message and follow the steps would be massive improvement. Whoever at Mozilla thought this error design, displayed for this function, was a good thing is an idiot and has no business making these kinds of decisions.
IMHO of course.
I am Jack's smirking revenge.
1. The choice is between self-signed and no encryption only, and Firefox is pushing manufacturers towards the less secure option.
Read my lips: Firefox does not stop you using self-signed certs! - 4 clicks and you've added an exception for that site - Firefox will not bug you again for that site.
The documentation for appliances could and should tell you that its OK to ignore the scary warnings in this case. Except all the appliances I've encountered use plain http: out of the box, and have done long before the advent of Firefox 3. Perhaps you also blame Mozilla for the fact that they also come with WPA/WEP disabled and "admin" as the login password?
Typically, you first encounter a self-signed cert in a secure context
And how is the browser supposed to decide that the context is secure?
They can and have issued certs when they shouldn't have.
Right. so some CAs can screw up. So lets not bother to implement the protocol properly then.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Use a different screen for certificate issues than the standard error screen so that people notice the difference. Maybe throw up a little diagram explaining what a self-signed cert is and what it means to the person browsing. Alert the user of the situation, and then provide them with the information (in a simplified but not over-simplified format) they need to make the decision correctly. This isn't a very difficult issue to deal with.
Because I've never gotten it to work.
Last time it happened there was a button that seemed to be the obvious way to grant the exception that Firefox3 wanted but it was greyed out.
Has noone else seen this behavior?
Because I'm getting pretty tired of seeing how easy it is to bypass when it seemingly doesn't work.
Kevin
My HP OfficeJet has a configuration page thats by default https, it's also a self signed certificate and the 4 step process to access the configuration page on a network printer is nuts.
This is a bad approach that attacks the wrong end of the problem. The real problem is that *after they are accepted* self-signed certs and trusted-authority-signed certs are treated as providing the exact same guarantees. In reality they provide two distinct things, each of which has its place. Self-signed certs provide end-to-end encryption without saying anything about where the other end is. Signed certs make stronger (but not foolproof!) guarantees about the other end of the channel.
The problem is that both types of certs get you the *same* lock in the corner of the window. This is really bad, because that lock icon is the green light for grandma to enter her credit card number. She should *never* be doing that on a site with a self-signed cert, and it shouldn't matter whether or not junior was using the computer earlier and jumped through the hoops to add an exception for the cert of some promising-looking porn site. The icon needs to reflect the *guarantee*, not the delivery mechanism.
My suggestion would be to show a warning when accepting a self-signed cert that contains language and images -- people are visual -- describing the idea of secure communication with an unknown party, and make it easy to accept the cert. But for goodness' sakes, use a *different* icon, something that cannot be mistaken for a lock, to represent the security. Show an envelope, or a pipe representing the inability to look inside the connection. (I know, tubes...) I'm sure somebody brighter than myself can figure out a good icon for this status.
The thing about security as it relates to ordinary folks is you have to have a simple story to tell them or they just ignore it. "Look for the lock and you're OK" is as simple as it gets, which makes it a very good, very useful story. Putting "the lock" on self-signed cert connections dilutes that story, which is a bad, bad idea.
(As an aside, I've actually always thought the lock was too subtle. I'd rather say "when your entire browser window starts pulsing gold you're OK to enter your credit card number".)
The end solution to this problem, since I'm not willing to pay for SSL expensive certificates was to just to convert from self signed certificates to regular HTTP.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
$10 / year?!? WHERE?!? Try $300/year and up.
SSL provides two things. Data stream encryption, and identity validation. In the practical world what a CA signature means is that the certificate was issued to the entity to whom the domain is registered. This prevents someone from hijacking a DNS entry and acting as the SSL site for example.
Where things get dicy is if someone only cares to have the data stream encrypted, perhaps for open wireless hotspot users. Self signed certificates are free, and accomplish this. Presently the browser portrays them as absurdly and overwhelmingly dangerous... when in reality they are no more dangerous than a plain http connection, which provides no identity verification either. I do not want self signed certs being portrayed as equally secure to CA signed ones, but they are not huge red bar with 5 warnings dangerous.
All the red bar, "security feature", protects is the looting interest of the certificate authority.
Can someone explain how the intersection of "websites with expired certificates" and "legitimate websites" is anything other than the null set?
self-signed certs don't prevent prying eyes in the slightest.
Of course they do.
I installed self-signed certificates on several of my services. I know the fingerprints. I verified the fingerprints in my browser. If the certificates change I'll get an ugly warning.
Where's your attack on this setup?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
See topic. If so, this action would only move the problem and leave me without trust.
I think the feature is good, for public, in the wild use. For QA though, its horrible. We generally don't use real certs for QA environments, and the extra effort we have to go through to work around this is generally not compatible with our timelines. It also means we can't use automation tools (Selenium) with FF3. Therefor, we don't certify FF3 as compatible with our stuff. There needs to be a way to turn this feature off.
There's a fundamental design error at the heart of SSL, which is that you can't separate the functions of data encryption and host identity. There are perfectly legitimate situations where you care about one or the other, but not both. As a server admin, I should be able to install a self-signed cert to support data encryption, and perhaps mark it as "I'm making no claims at identity"; under those circumstances, the browser should quietly manage https connections and treat them exactly like http connections in every other way.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
I work at a web hosting company. I love ff3 but it would be a god send to be able to disable the feature and just get a nag bar. I know the certificate is self signed, we made it. Almost every cpanel box runs a self signed cert, there isn't a valid reason not to. Just let us turn the feature off.
"To get past this error page, users have to go through four different steps before they can access the website, which from a usability standpoint is far from ideal. This way of handling websites with expired or self-signed SSL certificates is bound to scare away a lot of inexperienced users, no matter how legitimate the website is."
GOOD. This is what EVERY browser should do.
Anyone who thinks otherwise either does not understand what the purpose of certificates is in this context, or has a very different definition of trust than the dictionary.
your proposed policy ("Always leap-of-faith") would mean ANY conventional phishing site could trivially use SSL and present a nice happy lock icon
Maybe you should study reading comprehension. Here is the last paragraph in the grandparent's post just for you to read again:
The only thing you should change is that a self-signed certificate does not display the green status bar and lock, just make it look like a normal every day HTTP site, accept it automatically, and only warn the user if the certificate changed since last visit.
Really, the only argument for Firefox's behavior is that "it makes people trust the site". The answer is to remove the thing that makes people trust the site, not pop up scary warnings that you don't get for completely untrustworth http!
Why can't users get security right (revisited) [...]
Security people are wierdos
People might be interested in a Firefox Extension we have created at Carnegie Mellon: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~perspectives/ Perspectives uses network probing from a set of semi-trusted "network notaries" to allow the browser to determine if a self-signed/expired/mismatched is valid. If so, it can automatically override the annoying FF warning pages. We welcome all feedback!
I think what you are missing here is the fact that man-in-the-middle tools are easy to obtain and use, for example: http://www.oxid.it/
Because of this, unauthenticated certificates are utterly worthless as a security measure.
It's like your asking "Why doesn't mozilla suport ROT13 as a stream cipher? I mean, surly ROT13 is safer than no encryption at all, right? Do they have some corrupt deal with the AES guys?"
Now, I agree there is a place for self-signed certificates. However, the correct approach is to create your own certificate authority, and add it to your browser's trust store.
The problem lies in the use of SSL as both site identifier (for which we pay companies like Verisign *way* too much money) and as transmission security (for which certification is wholly irrelevant).
The sad truth is that the site identifier is already an out of date approach - with the so-called main-in-the-browser attack (man in the middle, but via Trojan) your site identifier will happily proclaim the site to be correct, but what happens inside your browser is another matter altogether.
For what it's worth, most Swiss private banks that offer electronic banking now design from an assumption that the client IS infected, and I think that approach is justified.
Going back to the topic at hand, I think FF should make this alarming yelling optional. Just when I thought some intelligence had arrived after Kaspersky finally got rid of that f*cking screech sound when it found something (I banned deployment of it because of that), along comes Mozilla and creates a new problem. I have yet to find any decent user consultation on this.
For those who believe a CA signed cert is more secure than a self signed one, perhaps you could explain why I am now the proud owner of a certificate trusted by firefox for a domain I have absolutely no affiliation with?
With a lie or two and a few minutes of your time, you too can be in a position to mount flawless man in the middle attacks against even those sites using CA signed certs.
While pondering the implications of cruddy CA issuing policies, consider also that self signed certificates can be added to your trusted list in firefox, and will cause a warning if another self signed cert suddenly replaces it.
The same is not true of CA signed ones. They cannot even be added to the list unless they've expired. Worse still, a fake CA signed cert such as the one I now possess will prevent the warnings about new certs being different from your stored ones.
To properly combat MITM attacks, FF should give the option of adding both self signed and CA signed certs to the trusted list and alerting users to any change in those certs, regardless of whether the new cert is CA signed or not.
Screaming that self signed certs are somehow dangerous while CA signed ones are immune to attack does nothing for security.
I for one welcome our new security theatre overlords