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Category Archives for "Security"

HTTP/3: From root to tip

HTTP/3: From root to tip

HTTP is the application protocol that powers the Web. It began life as the so-called HTTP/0.9 protocol in 1991, and by 1999 had evolved to HTTP/1.1, which was standardised within the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). HTTP/1.1 was good enough for a long time but the ever changing needs of the Web called for a better suited protocol, and HTTP/2 emerged in 2015. More recently it was announced that the IETF is intending to deliver a new version - HTTP/3. To some people this is a surprise and has caused a bit of confusion. If you don't track IETF work closely it might seem that HTTP/3 has come out of the blue. However,  we can trace its origins through a lineage of experiments and evolution of Web protocols; specifically the QUIC transport protocol.

If you're not familiar with QUIC, my colleagues have done a great job of tackling different angles. John's blog describes some of the real-world annoyances of today's HTTP, Alessandro's blog tackles the nitty-gritty transport layer details, and Nick's blog covers how to get hands on with some testing. We've collected these and more at https://cloudflare-quic.com. And if that tickles your fancy, be sure Continue reading

Tracing Soon-to-Expire Federal .gov Certificates with CT Monitors

Tracing Soon-to-Expire Federal .gov Certificates with CT Monitors

As of December 22, 2018, parts of the US Government have “shut down” because of a lapse in appropriation. The shutdown has caused the furlough of employees across the government and has affected federal contracts. An unexpected side-effect of this shutdown has been the expiration of TLS certificates on some .gov websites. This side-effect has emphasized a common issue on the Internet: the usage of expired certificates and their erosion of trust.

For an entity to provide a secure website, it needs a valid TLS certificate attached to the website server. These TLS certificates have both start dates and expiry dates. Normally certificates are renewed prior to their expiration. However, if there’s no one to execute this process, then websites serve expired certificates--a poor security practice.

This means that people looking for government information or resources may encounter alarming error messages when visiting important .gov websites:

Tracing Soon-to-Expire Federal .gov Certificates with CT Monitors

The content of the website hasn’t changed; it’s just the cryptographic exchange that’s invalid (an expired certificate can’t be validated). These expired certificates present a trust problem. Certificate errors often dissuade people from accessing a website, and imply that the site is not to be trusted. Browsers purposefully make it difficult to continue to Continue reading

Consumer Electronics Show: Everything’s Connected, But What About Security and Privacy?

We spent last week at the Consumer Electronics Show (aka CES) in Las Vegas, with over 180,000 of our closest friends. And with 4,500 exhibitors present, you’d have less than 30 seconds at each booth if you wanted to talk to all of them. Many articles have covered the cool new things, so in this blogpost we are going to discuss our overall impressions as they relate to our work on consumer IoT security and privacy.

Not surprisingly, there were many interesting conference sessions and a wide variety of innovative products on display, including some that seemed to push the bounds of credibility in their claims. Integration of devices with voice-driven and other platforms was everywhere – Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple HomeKit, and Samsung SmartThings being the most widely adopted to date. 5G was a hot topic, especially for its improved speeds and flexibility, though specifics about its availability are still hard to pin down.

Everything these days is getting connected to the Internet – from cat toys to sports simulators to home automation. One area that seems to be gaining more traction because it has gone beyond the “gadget” stage and is solving real problems is health and Continue reading

Internet Society Delhi Chapter and CCAOI Organize Webinar on India’s Draft Intermediary Rules

On 10 January, the Internet Society Delhi Chapter and CCAOI jointly organised an interactive webinar on the draft Information Technology [Intermediary Guidelines (Amendment) Rules] 2018 (“the draft Intermediary Rules”) to improve understanding of it and to encourage members and other Indian stakeholders to submit their comments to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) during their public comment period. The draft Intermediary Rules seeks to modify Section 79(2)(c) of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (the IT Act). Section 79 of the IT Act introduces obligations for intermediaries to meet to gain exemption from liability over the third-party information that they “receive, store, transmit, or provide any service with respect to.” These proposed changes were developed by MeitY to try to address misinformation and harmful content on social media, which have been connected with lynching and other recent violent acts of vigilantism.

The session was moderated by Subhashish Panigrahi, chapter development manager for Asia-Pacific at the Internet Society, and Amrita Choudhury, treasurer of the Internet Society Delhi Chapter and director of the CCAOI.

The changes to the IT Act proposed in the draft Intermediary Rules would require intermediaries to provide monthly notification to users on content they should not share; ensure that the originator Continue reading

One-Click DNSSEC with Cloudflare Registrar

One-Click DNSSEC with Cloudflare Registrar
One-Click DNSSEC with Cloudflare Registrar

When you launch your domain to the world, you rely on the Domain Name System (DNS) to direct your users to the address for your site. However, DNS cannot guarantee that your visitors reach your content because DNS, in its basic form, lacks authentication. If someone was able to poison the DNS responses for your site, they could hijack your visitors' requests.

The Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) can help prevent that type of attack by adding a chain of trust to DNS queries. When you enable DNSSEC for your site, you can ensure that the DNS response your users receive is the authentic address of your site.

We launched support for DNSSEC in 2014. We made it free for all users, but we couldn’t make it easy to set up. Turning on DNSSEC for a domain was still a multistep, manual process. With the launch of Cloudflare Registrar, we can finish the work to make it simple to enable for your domain.

You can now enable DNSSEC with a single click if your domain is registered with Cloudflare Registrar. Visit the DNS tab in the Cloudflare dashboard, click "Enable DNSSEC", and we'll handle the rest. If you are Continue reading

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