Mozilla garners praise over Firefox security feature

IDG News Service — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:01:35 -0700

The debate over the self-signed certificate issue in Firefox 3.0 has fostered an add-on from Carnegie Mellon researchers and it seems a prevailing tide that Mozilla is headed down the right path.

Over the past few weeks the back-and-forth debate has intensified over a new security feature in Firefox 3.0 that throws out a warning page to users when a Web site's SSL certificate is expired or has not been issued by a "trusted third party". Critics contend the feature is confusing to users, fosters the impression that Web sites are broken, and dictates which certificate authorities (CA) are trusted and which are not.

Carnegie Mellon University on Monday posted a free add-on to Mozilla that helps bypass the warning page without compromising Firefox's intended security enhancement.

Comments to Network World's story outlining the original debate over Firefox's handling of self-signed and expired certificates seems to indicate that many think Mozilla is doing the right thing, including issuing its warning message on self-signed certificates issued even by seemingly trusted sources such as the Department of Defense.
Although most of the comments were from anonymous posters (not surprising for security folks), the overwhelming majority supported the need for tight security despite the burden it might place on users.

"Sorry folks, Mozilla got it right!" said one poster who identified himself as working in information security. "I have NO problems with the way that Firefox does this (they MIGHT want to provide more "user friendly" explanation text, but I have no problems with it as it sits!)."

Others also chimed in on defaulting on the side of tightened security.

"I agree with the warning -- long overdue in my opinion," wrote another poster.

"If any institution can't fork out (USD) $15 for a real cert, then perhaps it should take down its web server and communicate with its customers via first class mail," wrote reader David Backeberg. "Finally, there's nothing stopping you from personally adding a DoD CA to your browser list of trusted CAs."

One reader, likely from Venafi, cited a study underwritten by the vendor showing that mismanaged encryption technologies do negatively influence the behavior of browser users. The conclusions show that 14% of certificates across the Fortune 1000 are expired on any given day. In addition, since 2005 there has been a 67% increase in expired certificates among Internet sites, from 8.4% to 14%. The study also shows that 48% of users feel comfortable connecting to a Web site of a company they trust, perhaps validating the exception rules available in Firefox 3.0 or the workaround available with the Carnegie-Mellon add-on called Perspectives.
Perspectives sets up a system of notaries, according to a response to Network World's story by the Carnegie Mellon researchers.

"The idea is that 'network notary' servers scattered across the Internet use network probing to build a history of keys used by a server. When a client receives a self-signed/expired cert, it can compare with the certs seen by the network notaries and see if that key is valid, or the result of a man-in-the-middle attack."

Perspectives also will identify if an attacker has tricked one of the certificate authorities trusted by Firefox into incorrectly issuing a certificate for a trusted Web site and warn the user.

One reader who was identified as "MarketObserver" summed up the issue in terms of integrity of the system: "If certificates are going to provide the intended protection for consumers, they should be current and issued by a trusted source. Otherwise, the system is broken. Site managers should get their act together and keep their certs up to date."

The issue also was flipped on its head by one responder who concluded:

"While the technology of certificates might be secure, I think the business model and practices aren't. The whole trust model depends on there being only a 'few' organizations that everyone knows (and trusts), who in turn sign other peoples' certificates. Implicit in that is that the 'few' trusted organizations can be properly trusted to vet the people whose certificates they sign. The more places that your browser 'trusts' to validate the signature of a certificate, the more opportunity there is for meaningless trust."