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xp84 • yesterday at 8:22 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

In the modern day that's arguably fine, most users only interact with a few actual companies online (though many of them haphazardly use dozens of domains and dozens of unrelated certificates).

The only 'real' problem though with this approach is it requires a trusted path for the bank to get the "JP Morgan Chase root CA cert" into my hands (like a QR code they hand me physically). Serving it up over http: or over an unvalidated SSL context at first use seems to defeat the purpose since I could be being MitMd the first time I hit chase.com. In practice most people would be angry that they couldn't use the bank's website if their new phone or PC didn't have the certificate yet, and if places start advertising their cert QRs everywhere, it will normalize the idea that you add a CA certs all the time, leading to CA cert QRs being on billboards and bus stops and eventually fraudulent ones would be snuck in that way.


Replies

GoblinSlayer • today at 12:09 AM

QR codes are already everywhere, and are even used to distribute software, it's already normalized.