[5858] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
RE: Is SSL dead?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Stewart)
Fri Oct 8 17:58:18 1999
Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19991007095728.009e8650@idiom.com>
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 09:57:28 -0700
To: Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com>,
"Phillip Hallam-Baker" <hallam@ai.mit.edu>,
"Robert Hettinga" <rah@shipwright.com>, <dcsb@ai.mit.edu>,
<cypherpunks@cyberpass.net>, <cryptography@c2.net>
From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>
In-Reply-To: <4.2.0.58.19991006180639.00aa6440@mail.wenet.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
At 04:35 PM 10/6/99 , Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
>>This is a problem with SSL 2.0 first discovered by Simon Spero then at EIT.
>>It was fixed in SSL 3.0, that must be almost three years ago.
>>The server certificate now binds the public key to a specific Web server
>>address.
That means that you can only succeed against web-users whose browsers
still accept SSL2.0, which is most Netscape users by default;
I don't know if IE also defaults to that, but it probably does.
Even if the https://www.target.com uses SSL3.0, the user isn't talking to it -
they're talking to https://www.attacker.com, which can use 2.0 if it wants.
Thanks!
Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
