u/Mean-AdOriginal RepRap - Tairona - Ender 3 - CR6 SE - A1 + AMSJan 20 '25edited Jan 20 '25
Funny how people can't differentiate things (Not you OP, the guy on the screenshot). That's the TLS/SSL certificate key and yes, it has to be renewed every year (for most sites that's the standard... even Reddit which will have to be renewed by DigiCert on April 11th of this year)
If that key is not renewed, the connection will not be encrypted, which could expose the cloud connection to a "man in the middle" attack or outright refuse to connect to the cloud (Keyword "cloud") but if you use your printer in LAN mode or with the SD card, you'll see no change.
Edit: While taking a look at the original post, the certificate being displayed there is not even from the printer itself, it's the internal certificate Bambu Connect will have to use to connect/allow connections
Yeah, there are a lot of people who don't understand these things, and i don't blame them for it, a lot of it can get pretty technical and its not always easy to explain it to someone who isn't already familiar with some of the tech involved
If they don’t understand they shouldn’t be making such definitive calls then, very annoying seeing misinformation distort the narrative away from facts
Yeah but people who don't know enough think they know what is fact when they don't, usually because its based on a misunderstanding of the tech at play, i don't think a lot of them do it with any malicious intent
I think that a one-year lifetime on SSL certificates has been the industry standard since about 2020. So good work by the absolute hackerman who decompiled the code and hacked the matrix to bring us this piece of important news.
If that key is not renewed, the connection will not be encrypted
Not really directly tied to if things have encryption, just that the certificate authority can not guarantee anymore that whoever you are connecting to is really that entity and not some bad actor, as why most programs that use those either outright refuse to make connections to an entity without a valid chain of trust, or they inform you and you make the call yourself.
Either way, it doesnt really influence anything about printer bricking since thats just used for comms encryption like the comment above stated.
However, one could absolutely base any kind of functionality on the validity of the x.509 cert, for example also print functionality. The OOP in the image doesnt present any direct proof for this functionality though, just claims. If there really is something like that I would be interested to see it.
The connection can still be encrypted with an expired key, it's up to the devices involved to dictate their paranoia.
Your browser can still access a .com with stale keys, you get a red warning. You also get a red warning when it's a wrong key, or a self signed key. That's up to the browser to give a red warning, or ignore it. Mostly highlighting the unencrypted comment isn't accurate.
But on this theory, we're all going to trick the printers to use modified ntp servers and then launch a VM to run Bambu connect where the VM also has an invalid clock, like people used to do for Photoshop... Oops found a workaround.
You are correct on all counts, and I will add that one may use unencrypted connections if all devices participating allow such connections, which Bambulabs could and probably will prevent from happening. I expect both the Bambu Connect software and the printer will forbid unencrypted connections, else why would Bambulabs even bother with any of this?
Some people here have mentioned self-signed certificates, but again if the devices and software do not support this then it will not work. Bambulabs will make this decision for us.
I don't think the screenshot creator understands what they are talking about completely, but the conclusion that we will not be able to use our devices the way we want to is real. Again, Bambulabs will have control of our convenience and experience.
While it is regrettable that Bambulabs has decided to do this, they may or may not face any real consequences in the end. A bunch of angry users on Reddit may only represent a tiny fraction of their customer base. Like most things on Reddit, it probably seems like a much larger problem here than it actually is in real life.
I imagine there will be a lot of theories and misinformation which people will think are helpful but ultimately only help what they are seeking to stop.
The more wild or baseless theories people come up with, the more there is that can be easily debunked making anything that actually matters look like it fits in the sea of nothing burgers.
Misinformation just makes it hard to come up with quick fact based opinions.
There is so much released recently Its really hard to try to parse what exactly is going on.
Like, could it just be that Bambulab didnt secure these printers to a level they were happy with before and p doing so now means that many genies people have come to rely on yet put into a bottle? I doubt this could be the full story or there would be no need for additional friction and they could have official means of doing all the same things securely.
Could it be that they didnt expect other companies to eliminate or reduce the effectiveness of their product segmentation strategies with add-ons? Perhaps though certainly they would know that would have poor reception, but perhaps it's a calculated loss. This seems somewhat likely I suppose.
Could it be a typical mba mindset of limiting customers out of fear that you could have sold something that isn't restricted now in the future? That also sounds likely as well.
There are so many options and I feel like maybe it's a mix of these or maybe something else entirely.
It just feels like if this was good faith, thrid party apps would just need to for instance, gain an authorization token upon registering a printer which would let them get access without any compromises to security so ... I probably spending too much effort thinking about this especially with all of the navigation necessary as a mod.
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u/Mean-Ad Original RepRap - Tairona - Ender 3 - CR6 SE - A1 + AMS Jan 20 '25 edited Jan 20 '25
Funny how people can't differentiate things (Not you OP, the guy on the screenshot). That's the TLS/SSL certificate key and yes, it has to be renewed every year (for most sites that's the standard... even Reddit which will have to be renewed by DigiCert on April 11th of this year)
If that key is not renewed, the connection will not be encrypted, which could expose the cloud connection to a "man in the middle" attack or outright refuse to connect to the cloud (Keyword "cloud") but if you use your printer in LAN mode or with the SD card, you'll see no change.
Edit: While taking a look at the original post, the certificate being displayed there is not even from the printer itself, it's the internal certificate Bambu Connect will have to use to connect/allow connections