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what if the hacker provided the public key for https connection? (www.youtube.com)

submitted 5 months ago by Moxible@monyet.cc to c/technology@lemmy.world

42 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So this video explains how https works. What I don't get is what if a hacker in the middle pretended to be the server and provided me with the box and the public key. wouldn't he be able to decrypt the message with his private key? I'm not a tech expert, but just curious and trying to learn.

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[–] NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It is possible and it has been done.

You need to get your "hacker" key signed/certified by an official CA. Which is not that difficult with some of them because they are doing it for money.

[–] Cras@feddit.uk 6 points 5 months ago (2 children)

You don't really 'need to' in a world where a good proportion of people will happily click 'continue anyway' when they get any sort of certificate error

[–] zeluko@kbin.social 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Thats why we have HSTS and HSTS preloading, so the browser refuses to allow this (and disabling it is usually alot deeper to find than a simple button to "continue anyways")

[–] IHawkMike@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

In Chromium browsers you can simply type "thisisunsafe" to bypass even HSTS failures.

[–] NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

people will happily click 'continue anyway'

Not possible without a certificate. There will be no TLS connection, only an error message. No 'click continue'.

[–] aBundleOfFerrets@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It is trivial for an attacker to make self-signed TLS certs, and you can absolutely just click “continue” on sites that use them when you get a warning from the browser

[–] NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

What browser is that?

[–] Cras@feddit.uk 3 points 5 months ago

Firefox, Chrome, Edge, will all warn you about self-signed certs or cert mismatches but allow you to continue. You're completely correct that SSL/TLS needs a certificate, but it doesn't need to be CA issued or in any way legitimate for the encrypted tunnel to be established

[–] aBundleOfFerrets@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I am personally using firefox and referencing my own servers that use their own self-signed TLS certs that I have not bothered to load onto my pc because they aren’t public, but chromium-based browsers aren’t some outlier here

[–] zeluko@kbin.social 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Your own servers probably also dont have HSTS enabled, or clicking continue will be disabled (if not overwritten in your browser-config)

[–] aBundleOfFerrets@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Reading the HSTS spec, it doesn’t work on first connection, and while most people are using websites they access more than once, that notably isn’t all web use.

[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 months ago

It would be inherently impossible for HSTS to work on first connection, you are correct.