Re:Replacing a Thinkpad X60 Bootflash Chip
by nullc on Thursday May 08, 2014 @10:14PM
(#7718957)
I don't buy that argument: The same ability to manually inspect the fingerprint (against what?) exist in both cases.
Existing browsers do not facilitate trust on first use because there is no interface difference between "I've never seen this sites unsigned cert before" and "The unsigned cert I was expecting changed". In particular, you can't distinguish the "self-signed cert I was expecting is still there" from "it's now giving me a world-power forged CA signed cert" (both cases show no notice).
Besides, inhibiting people from rotating an always online key is pretty poor key management. If you were to improve TOFU in browsers, it could work just as well for CA authenticated. So having it signed is purely additive, and while maybe there is some false sense of security there thats not a good tradeoff for completely dismantling the users instincts in reporting suspicious stuff.
Existing browsers do not facilitate trust on first use because there is no interface difference between "I've never seen this sites unsigned cert before" and "The unsigned cert I was expecting changed". In particular, you can't distinguish the "self-signed cert I was expecting is still there" from "it's now giving me a world-power forged CA signed cert" (both cases show no notice).
Besides, inhibiting people from rotating an always online key is pretty poor key management. If you were to improve TOFU in browsers, it could work just as well for CA authenticated. So having it signed is purely additive, and while maybe there is some false sense of security there thats not a good tradeoff for completely dismantling the users instincts in reporting suspicious stuff.