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DEF CON 19 - Moxie Marlinspike - SSL And The Future Of Authenticity

DEFCONConference · talk · Watch on YouTube

CryptographySecurity & hacking

What it is

Moxie Marlinspike's DEF CON 19 talk on the weaknesses of SSL and the certificate authority system. He explains how CA trust became a problem and proposes an alternative that removes the CA oligopoly without reducing security.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN points to it as the classic overview of why TLS certificate trust is flawed, and it resurfaces whenever CA or HTTPS security comes up.

  • 4 people recommended it
  • 4 different months
  • 2 strong recommendations
  • first 2013, last 2026

What HN commenters said

  1. “you should definitely watch Moxie Marlinspike's (lead dev of Signal) talk”

    Moxie recounts talking with an SSL developer about early design assumptions

    mashedvikings, 2018-04 · Strong recommendation · in “Mythology About Security”

  2. “I've found Moxie Marlinspike's talk [1] to be a great overview of these sorts of issues.”

    Great overview of TLS and certificate trust issues

    8organicbits, 2023-02 · Strong recommendation · in “Weakening TLS protection, South Korean style”

  3. “Moxie has good points about the problems TLS has.”

    Explains TLS problems beyond cryptanalysis

    maqp, 2019-11 · Recommendation · in “Encrypted web traffic now exceeds 90%”

  4. “Moxie (of Signal fame) has a hilarious account of the story”

    Funny account of the 2011 Comodo hack and its attribution

    mbakke, 2020-12 · Recommendation · in “Security expert warned SolarWinds in 2019 that anyone could access server”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: ssl, tls, certificate authorities, security, moxie marlinspike, def con

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