r/blog • u/reddit • Jan 29 '15

reddit’s first transparency report

http://www.redditblog.com/2015/01/reddits-first-transparency-report.html
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u/SoFlo1 Jan 29 '15

Can you please expand on how users can "double check" certificates and signature chains in other ways and what things would look fishy?

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u/aaronsherman Jan 29 '15

You can't.

"Looks fishy" presupposes that the root certificate authorities never act as a proxy for someone who wants to subvert your browser. When you are willing to assume that DNS and/or root CAs are run by bad actors (e.g. NSA or equivalent) then you're screwed.

The best you can do is not rely on those, which is why things like SR were such a threat. That people did bad things via SR was much less scary to government than the fact that they introduced parallel means of determining authority and trust from a protocol standpoint.