In recent news, Google has put forth a proposal known as the "Web Environment Integrity Explainer", authored by four of its engineers. On the surface, it
You’re relying on the device to provide a signal of authenticity with this model. Firefox can simply say it’s authentic. However this will just lead to any signals from Firefox being ignored by any site… So Firefox would actually just need to spoof whatever signals Chrome is using… And thanks to Chromium being open source that shouldn’t be too hard. If it’s a device ID or mac address that’s being used to show uniqueness, that can be randomized and presented to sites…
I haven’t looked at the spec… and from my understanding the Spec isn’t even finalized yet… I could be wrong. But It’s certainly not going to be a case that each webhost has a complete list of ssl certs from every client… That’s never going to happen. It could be that a cert is issued to Apple and Google, and they sub-cert out to individual devices for identities. Not sure what would stop firefox from just pulling a glut of certs and rotating them out regularly.
Yeah, I just don’t get the point of what Google is doing with all of this. The while point is to require attestation because than you know people are viewing ads. So websites can either “trust” certs issued by Firefox, or not and lose out on ad revenue. I guess Google absence doesn’t have to trust firefoz attestation, but then it is going to payout less and people will seek other providers.
SSL certs provide trust because you ultimately trust the issuing authority, which is supposedly garunteednby world governments. Their are known corrupt actors issuing certs, but ultimately you can be pretty sure that the SSL cert matches the domain you are on, and that it was requested by the owner of that domain. But you can still choose to not visit that domain if you don’t trust it. There are a lot of services that will block its already, so I don’t really get what the point of attestation is.
Firefox could always spoof the standard to maintain compatibility.
If it could be spoofed easily, wouldn’t that defeat the point?
I mean you can’t just “spoof” a ssl cert or private ssh key, I have to assume this is at least that good.
You’re relying on the device to provide a signal of authenticity with this model. Firefox can simply say it’s authentic. However this will just lead to any signals from Firefox being ignored by any site… So Firefox would actually just need to spoof whatever signals Chrome is using… And thanks to Chromium being open source that shouldn’t be too hard. If it’s a device ID or mac address that’s being used to show uniqueness, that can be randomized and presented to sites…
I haven’t looked at the spec… and from my understanding the Spec isn’t even finalized yet… I could be wrong. But It’s certainly not going to be a case that each webhost has a complete list of ssl certs from every client… That’s never going to happen. It could be that a cert is issued to Apple and Google, and they sub-cert out to individual devices for identities. Not sure what would stop firefox from just pulling a glut of certs and rotating them out regularly.
Yeah, I just don’t get the point of what Google is doing with all of this. The while point is to require attestation because than you know people are viewing ads. So websites can either “trust” certs issued by Firefox, or not and lose out on ad revenue. I guess Google absence doesn’t have to trust firefoz attestation, but then it is going to payout less and people will seek other providers.
SSL certs provide trust because you ultimately trust the issuing authority, which is supposedly garunteednby world governments. Their are known corrupt actors issuing certs, but ultimately you can be pretty sure that the SSL cert matches the domain you are on, and that it was requested by the owner of that domain. But you can still choose to not visit that domain if you don’t trust it. There are a lot of services that will block its already, so I don’t really get what the point of attestation is.
Good point.