this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2021
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Privacy
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Because bad actors that can hijack your traffic are unable to get a fake certificate signed?!
How would that be?
Getting a fake certificate signed requires state level opposition or entities with that level of resources, and frankly if your opposition is state level, you're fucked anyway.
Self-signed certs let Jimmy-Joe-Bob's Rifle Range and Real Good Hacker Script Kiddie Ring fake you out in minutes.
Yeah like I said, if they can hijack your traffic, they can easily get a fake cert signed.
How? They would have to steal the CA key and could only impersonate the site with the self signed cert. (At least if you don't add it to your certificate store)
The cert is self-signed. There is by definition no CA key! Anybody accessing that sight, unless they did something phenomenally stupid, is going to have to validate access by self-signed cert on each access. And that means that any MitM isn't going to flag any alarms ... because they'd be inserting themselves as a self-signed cert.