[Cerowrt-devel] Nokia decrypts user's HTTPS to compress to improve speed

[Maciej Soltysiak]

On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 3:58 PM, <dpreed at reed.com> wrote:

> I'm curious if they have data about how much compression they are
> achieving?  Most HTTPS servers are set up by people who use quite a bit of
> compression in the payload (gzip of web pages, etc, "minification" of
> javascript), so I would hypothesize that the actual savings are minimal on
> the average.
>
My finger in the air suggests that it is no more than 30% on average. Is it
worth it? If it's up to 1/3 of more media time available for other stations
to send data, perhaps it is.


> However, it points out that there is a man-in-the-middle problem with
> HTTPS alone.  Your phone's browser should be checking the certificates more
> rigorously than it does.  It can do that quite easily, and I think the
> destination can do that in Javascript that comes with the pages.
>
Hmm, wouldn't something like HTTPS Everywhere + SSL Observatory help here?
It should detect the certs are different than what they've been seen by
other users.


> "We don't look" is not a defense in the EU privacy regime, and probably
> not in the US one (though many US Senators think that ISP's looking at
> content is just fine).
>
You are right. There's a different angle than privacy here too. A one that
users should be able to understand better. Such a phone might also be a
security threat. Maybe Nokia don't do anyting with except compression, but
malicious code knowing this might steer the compromised
browser+dodgy_cert+phone to rob you of money in your bank.



Maciej


>  ---Original Message-----
> From: "Maciej Soltysiak" <maciej at soltysiak.com>
> Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2013 9:46am
> To: cerowrt-devel at lists.bufferbloat.net
> Subject: [Cerowrt-devel] Nokia decrypts user's HTTPS to compress to
> improve speed
>
>
> http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/01/10/1356228/nokia-admits-decrypting-user-data-claiming-it-isnt-looking
>  Have a look at what corporations resort to when they're in need of
> serious debloating and things like TCP Fast Open? :-|
>  Regards,
> Maciej
>
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