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Not entirely. I kind of agree. I think I even posted a nearly identical comment once.

It would be nice if there were two kinds of connections. Encrypted unauth and encrypted auth. That seems strictly better than offering unencrypted connections. Your browser could still display the "wide open to attack" icon for encrypted unauth if you like.




Why?!

The entire reason people think TLS should have "unauthenticated encryption" (which is in the literature kind of an oxymoron) is that they don't like the SSL CAs.

I don't like them either.

But the SSL CAs are a UI issue. Instead of dinking around with the browser UI to make worthless "unauthenticated encryption" sessions appear different, why not just build a UI for TACK, let people sign their own certificates if they want, but then pin them in browsers so those sites can rely on key continuity instead of nothing.

Five years from now, if TACK pinning becomes the norm, I think it's a safe prediction that basic TLS certificates will be free from multiple vendors. Moreover, the corruption of the CA system will matter less, because unauthorized certificates will violate pins and be detected; the CAs that issue them can be evicted.

While we're at it, why don't we just fix the UI for managing CA roots? It hasn't changed since the mid-1990s.

I am baffled by why anyone would actively promote an insecure cryptosystem as a cure for UI problems, or even as an alternative for some entirely new cryptosystem like MinimaLT.


It's just a matter of what can be done today vs tomorrow vs next year.


All of these things are simply gated on browser vendors. That's the overhead. Why would you push for a new UI for insecure connections when you could instead lobby for TACK?




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