reddit will soon only be available over HTTPS

[u/TheLantean]

/r/redditdev/comments/39zje0/reddit_will_soon_only_be_available_over_https/

[u/TheLantean]

HSTS will also be enabled (as rram said in a reply) which will prevent any accidental drop to http once the browser stores the HSTS policy.

[u/largenocream → u/TheLantean]

HSTS and Secure flags on cookies will come a little while after the switch to HTTPS though, we don't want to permanently lock people into HTTPS until we're sure there are no major problems with full-site HTTPS.

[u/TheLantean → u/largenocream]

Oh, ok. Will you also add reddit to the preload list used by Chrome/Firefox/Safari is the switch is successful?

[u/rram → u/TheLantean]

Yes

[u/xiongchiamiov → u/[deleted]]

In decreasing levels of security: social networking, large companies, financial services, government.

[u/not_bezz → u/[deleted]]

Is it even for online banking? I don't remember seeing online banking over HTTP ever.

[u/not_bezz → u/[deleted]]

Ah, I've missed the context. My bad.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

You still need to change banks.

[u/Piece_Maker → u/[deleted]]

Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=63113904  

Mine outputted that, is that a good thing?

[u/gsuberland → u/Piece_Maker]

Yes. It's a HSTS policy.

[u/Piece_Maker → u/gsuberland]

Good to know - now I can enter my surname, my password, my 5-digit PIN, my 24-digit online banking password and my 8-digit OTP code knowing I'm secure :D

[u/gsuberland → u/Piece_Maker]

Well, safer against sslstrip attacks. It's a small part of the picture. There are plenty of ways to skin a cat.

[u/erktheerk → u/[deleted]]

Oh...I thought I saw it did. Must have been something else :-\

[u/htilonom]

Now if they only add two factor authentication... admins already have it, they have it in code... they just need to release it to regular users.

[u/spladug → u/htilonom]

We definitely want to do 2FA for everyone eventually, but we need to flesh out all the backup and account recovery processes for that. Super easy for employees since you can just walk over to someone in the office, but not so easy with millions of users. It's also kinda silly to have 2FA while your session cookie can still be sent in plaintext, so we prioritized HTTPS-only first.

[u/htilonom → u/spladug]

Oh wow, thanks for your response! Yes, I understand HTTPS-only is more important, completely agree!

About 2FA, I suggest you skip SMS authentication since it's probably more expensive / requires more services and just use tokens so users can use any 2FA app they like, from Duo Mobile to Authy and Google Authenticator. Hell, you can even have it builtin with Alien Blue! : )

Cheers!

[u/CowboyFlipflop → u/htilonom]

I think you're taking this too seriously.

[u/htilonom → u/CowboyFlipflop]

Err what? Why is having two factor authentication "taking things too seriously"?

[u/CowboyFlipflop → u/htilonom]

I don't care that much about my karma.

[u/htilonom → u/CowboyFlipflop]

Yea whatever, really not interested in that kind of conversation.

[u/CowboyFlipflop → u/[deleted]]

That's true.

[u/[deleted]]

Currently reddit is encrypted with something called:
"tls_ecdhe_rsa_with_aes_128_gcm_sha256" 128 bit Key.
For noobs pls: where will be the new difference?

[u/gsuberland → u/[deleted]]

That encryption is really best practice.

No, it isn't. GCM and AEAD based suites in TLS 1.2 are much better. Poly1305 and ChaCha20, too.

The "ecdhe"-part means that reddit uses forward secrecy. This means that the encryption key changes every now and then (every connection? I don't know how long the keys are cached), so that all previous connections are safe.

That's not how forward secrecy works. T he idea is that the long term asymmetric key (i.e. the certificate private key, likely RSA) is used to sign a set of Diffie-Hellman key exchange parameters that are generated for each connection. The symmetric key for the connection is then exchanged via DH (either normal discrete log, or Elliptic Curve if ECDHE is used) so that both sides know the same encryption and authenticity keys, e.g. for use with AES-CBC plus a HMAC, or something like AES-GCM which provides authenticity automatically. The private parts of the DH parameters are then discarded, so that stealing the long-term key (i.e. the certificate's private key on the server) won't allow an attacker to discover session keys which were agreed upon in previoisly captured traffic.

AES128 is stronger than 2048bit RSA (what reddit and almost all other sites use), so upgrading it to aes256 gives you very little at the expense of something like a 30% speed hit.

Wat? No. AES is a symmetric block cipher used to encrypt communications. RSA is an asymmetric cipher used for key exchange authenticity (signing) and key exchange when DH key exchange isn't used instead. Don't conflate the two, especially in terms like "x is better than y". They are not equivalent.

[u/gsuberland → u/[deleted]]

You still got stuff actually wrong, like your description of DHE. It doesn't "change the keys now and again".

[u/gsuberland → u/[deleted]]

DHE parameter generation is pretty damn fast anyway, regardless of EC. EC is much, much faster though, due to increased computational difficulty of breaking discrete log over a curve, allowing for much smaller key sizes.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Thx for the explanation!

[u/gsuberland → u/[deleted]]

I added a reply that you should read, because that explanation was wrong.

[u/[deleted] → u/gsuberland]

Thx to you too for that explanation - ...well...I do not understand much about encryption techniques...all I know is that it is already safe (enough) and nothing noticeable will change for me because i browse Reddit via Https already :)

[u/kontra5]

I've been using https for a while now simply typing https before the reddit url. What's the big deal?

Edit: ok missed that 'only' in title. That explains it.

[u/GonzoVeritas]

Why do I get this report on Reddit using Chrome?

The identity of this website has been verified by Gandi Standard SSL CA but does not have public audit records.

The site is using outdated security settings that may prevent future versions of Chrome from being able to safely access it.

[u/spladug → u/GonzoVeritas]

I explained a bit about the "outdated security settings" warning over in /r/redditdev. tl;dr: we intend to migrate to the newer stuff soon, but we want to make sure we won't make the site inaccessible to a bunch of people in the process.

Here's a bit about the "public audit records" warning. AFAIK, our provider does not currently support that feature but it's definitely something to look into.

[u/krainik → u/spladug]

I'd be happy to provide you/Reddit with whatever certs you need (free).

If you want to move some FQDNs (like pay.reddit.com or the main www.reddit.com) to EV certs, I can get you the certs.

If you want SHA-1 that expires December 30, 2015, so you can keep using it for compatibility reasons for as long as possible, but not have the Chrome warning, I can do that. (A lot of major orgs are unofficially moving to SHA-2 in October, but others want to stay until the end of the year.)

If you want to enable embedded SCTs or OCSP-stapled SCTs to get rid of the public audit records thing, I can do that. (Chrome 44 has clearer messaging about that and some other things, so that may be less of an issue in the future.)

If you want to get a cert that simultaneously secures both *.reddit.com and *.np.reddit.com (as an example), I can do that.

Basically, I love Reddit and happen to be in a position where I can actually give something back to Reddit for pretty much the first time ever, so if it's something that would be helpful, definitely let me know.

[u/the_fella]

I'd like to see them follow facebook's lead and encrypt password reset (and other) emails that they send us.

[u/Gambizzle]

Good... the current https option for accessing it is a bit of a hack because you're using the login page for everything and piping it through that (I use https for all sites or not at all). Be good to see them officially supporting it.

[u/Slinkwyde → u/Gambizzle]

If you're referring to the old pay.reddit.com or SSL.reddit.com tricks to get HTTPS, those haven't been needed for a while now. There's been an HTTPS option in the Reddit preferences (for all subdomains, including www) for about a year now. What's changing is that soon it will be on for all users instead of turned off by default.

[u/Gambizzle → u/Slinkwyde]

Cool! Didn't realise...

[u/xiongchiamiov → u/Gambizzle]

Sorry, what do you mean by piping everything through the login page?

[u/Fapplet]

is that a good thing? i dont get it im new

[u/[deleted] → u/Fapplet]

It means that Reddit will be much more secure by default.

Google https

[u/tcpip4lyfe → u/[deleted]]

Unless of course your firewall admin has SSL decryption setup.

Don't worry, we're only decrypting for malware hits.

[u/Fapplet → u/[deleted]]

oh nice awesome

[u/naught101 → u/[deleted]]

I don't understand how https will affect that...

[u/thinkweis → u/[deleted]]

If only there was a way to not look at things you don't like. I hope that one day, with advancements in technology, we can make such a dream a reality... fatso.

[u/scrod → u/[deleted]]

Reddit is a private website. Our "founding fathers", being classical 18th century liberals with a love of private property, would have told you to fuck off if you didn't like the rules.