Iranian banks' SSL certificates are being revoked due to OFAC sanctions

londons_explore

This seems like the kind of thing that the USA will explicitly grant an exception to. It is clearly bad if the whole of Iran gets their own CA infrastructure which the NSA can't as easily spy on.

Daishiman

So now that SSL certificates are being weaponized it now becomes a matter of national security for any country to have their own independent CA infra. Another win for the US.

128471599

It is a reminder to go back to cash, ATMs and machines where you can enter you transactions instead of using the Internet. There is no reason to give money to US middlemen for everything you do. The whole of the EU should do this, too. I stopped using Internet banking after my bank moved from SMS Tan to hardware Tan generator (one of which didn't work) to forced mobile app. No thanks.

jMyles

It's bizarre that there isn't yet a total separation of certificate-and-state.

badatnames

Utterly moronic. We support the freedom of the Iranian people by forcing them to install a local government root CA in every browser. I mean at this rate they won't even have to buy their monitoring tech from China any more, just an old PC and a late 90s tarball of Squid

lxgr

Forcing their customers to install government-affiliated alternative CAs, in turn allowing the government to spy on its citizens more easily via mis-issued certs? Great, that'll show them.

cyberax

This is super-dumb. The same thing is happening with Russian banks. Their answer? They're now asking users to install root certs from the Russian ministry of communications. So it can now MITM all the encrypted traffic in Russia.

pibaker

Sanctions on Iran are justified. But I worry this kind of action will just lead to the eventual rise of an alternative tech ecosystem in the long term, probably led by china and Russia. It will be bad for us, bad for people living under those regimes, but good for the regimes themselves because they will have the fullest control over their technology, without having to compromise with the West. Another example of why maximalist political hostility can be counterproductive. Leave an olive branch in sight, and you may work towards a mutually beneficial resolution, like the previous Iran nuclear deals. If push your opponent into a corner, then don't get upset when they jump over the wall into the wild where you can't catch them anymore. See also Chinese chips and AI.

zoobab

It's not as if SSL critics warned about this ponzi pyramid, prone to censorship.

MadrasTh0rn

Trump Vance Johnson Elon and Thiel are removing US institutions globally by force Trump is intentionally playing into Chinese, Russian Noth Korean, Iranian hands They must be impeached/removed regardless of intent Nobody voted for this

cestith

This seems like a bad idea.

borschtplease

One more technical challenge. The whole ssl infrastructure is incompatible with a state current planet moves forward to.

ValdikSS

The same applies to Russian banks. Russian banks have switched to internal Ministry of Digital Development CA which is not trusted in common browsers. https://crt.sh/?id=22899279066 (Revoked: privilegeWithdrawn)

gonzalohm

I may speak from ignorance, but why do SSL certificates depend on centralized CA? If I'm an entity such as a bank, I should be able to sign my own certificate and provide the public keys to my clients which then can use it to both encrypt communications and to make sure you are talking with the entity you want to talk to. Am I missing anything?

zzo38computer

It doesn't load for me, but I have read the other comments. There is the problem of TLS and X.509 being used with centralized authorities like this, even though it is not inherent to TLS nor to X.509 (although they were designed to be used in this way). In some circumstances, you can get a copy of the certificate (which might be self-signed) from somewhere else and then check that it matches in this circumstances. In other circumstances there are other things that can be done (e.g. TOFU, which has a different set of problems, but also has advantages in a different set of circumstances). What the security requirements are will depend on the circumstances, which can also depend on the user's intentions; they should not have to depend on a centralized authority. (There is the issue that a single X.509 certificate cannot have multiple issuers, though. There is also the issue that X.509 certificates cannot contain unsigned extensions (they could be added after the signature, but an implementation might check for additional fields after the signature and reject a certificate that has any). Although an alternative schema can be made (I have done so), it would not work with the existing protocols.)

duxup

This seems like a poor choice. Missing the point of sanctions, possible long term negative second order effects.

Zenul_Abidin

SSl certificates for websites probably should be out of scope for sanctions