Industry Concerns about TLS 1.3 - <AUTHOR> https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/tls/current/msg21278.html <comment><USER2> There are a lot of keyboard warriors in this thread. This guy puts forward a rational argument for big business.

Unless you have extensive experience in this area, perhaps you shouldn't be so quick to judge "oh they are just spying on their users".

The simple answer to this question is that if a way is not given for businesses to decrypt their own traffic that they generated and encrypted, they simply won't encrypt it.

Take this example: A regulation says that all incoming traffic into a banking sector company must be scanned for potential vulnerabilities and exploits, and allows for "compensating controls". If the incoming traffic is unable to be decrypted at TLS1.3, it will simply be decrypted at the boarder of the business and routed internally unencrypted. This would be worse than copying the TLS1.2 traffic for out-of-band scanning.

I'm not saying that this guy wasn't a little late by the party, but failing to recognise that big businesses have regulations you don't understand or even care about is a huge mistake that will make us all more insecure. After all, who doesn't have a bank account?

<comment><USER3> Implementing an official Bump-in-the-wire MITM method for TLS would be the final nail in the coffin of the protocol; nobody would take it seriously and would move onto IPSEC.

If big business needs to secure communications in and out of the enterprise, then they need to stop being lazy about it. Tap the endpoints and use internet proxies, block communications with unapproved websites, and install surveillance gear in the conference rooms. I get these are costly measures, but they are only costly because of input cost to get there, not operating cost.

Want to know how you get a gargantuan database out of any company? Ship it out the firewall through a client PC as a H.323 video stream through your favorite software package. You tell me how to filter that one on a modern, carrier grade Pal-Alto firewall? We have tremendous holes in the existing infrastructure because we don't want to put the work into actual security or into fundamental theory.

The bias here is the market should slow down for big business, the reality is, big business not being on the ball and putting pressure for changes on a protocol like this is a tremendous subsidy to those companies. Frankly, public sediment is right in this case, the big businesses should bare the brunt and cost of their mistakes.

<comment><USER4> I agree, this isn't a low margin business either. We are talking about inferior security for all internet users for the sake of Well Fargo's quarterly report.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >>> My view concerning your request: no.

is probably the best response for the request.

On a related note though, it's always amazing how on one hand Big Banking tries to show that it's in touch with the latest tech developments (Bitcoin Consortiums, RFID/NFC payments) etc. but on the other hand display a very shallow understanding of how secure systems should work.

<comment><USER6> I call it paper security or checklist security. Usually it is about implementing enough to check off a list of requirements from some document. Antivirus installed? Check (Nevermind it is a Linux box and AV loads a dubious proprietary driver in the kernel with a huge attack surface and remote exploit posibility because of how it does updates), such and such EAL-4 operating system intalled? Check, and so on ...

So they tick all the boxes and in the end up with a worse off posture than if they just stayed with defaults for example.

<comment><USER7> As far I remember, major banks have been rather secure in the last decades, especially compared to the hipster hackers at Yahoo/Dropbox/github/....

So maybe their checklist is worth a look.

<comment><USER6> You're right, that's fair. I can't remember a large bank was hacked as to where their customer's money was stolen or anything like that. It is usually retailers and such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't understand why the banks need to change TLS 1.3 to spy on their employees. When I was working at a bank, there were literally no routes from the Intranet to the Internet. Everything went through a proxy that blocked 95% of the Internet. Had to run a proxy server on jrock.us in order to get anything done. (They just bought the list of sites to block, and jrock.us never ended up on it. Blacklisting, very good security technique...)

<comment><USER9> The guy's rationale may be kind of dubious but it's clearly stated: there aren't any tools that do DPI on TLS 1.3 sessions right now.

<comment><USER8> You don't need to do deep packet inspection when you just MITM all the traffic.

<comment><USER10> MITM introduces significant delays, yet another single point of failure, adds significant risk of leakage. Current DPI are passive, so they have no such problems.

<comment><USER11> It's technical problem, that can be solved. Dedicated hardware optimized for MITM, probably.

<comment><USER12> It's already in use, in fact.

<comment><USER13> Who'd have thought banks would look for ways to save money?

Madness!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think this request is pretty unreasonable, and anything that stops the ability to passively snooping on TLS is a great thing.

I think there could be a security gain though in adding support for a better way to actively MITM TLS traffic though - in having a proper mechanism for filtering proxy firewalls. For some applications (say, school networks) it is OK to monitor and filter traffic, but the way it is done now is terrible for security. Usually this is by terminating the TLS at the proxy, scanning it, and then re-encrypting it with an certificate automatically generated and trusted by an internal CA (whose root certificate is installed on the machines).

The huge problem is that now everyone has to trust all the root CAs installed on the firewall, instead of being able to decide which ones to trust themselves. The firewall has to also decide whether or not to trust self- signed certificates.

Much better would be to be able to decrypt, re-encrypt with a certificate issued by a real CA, and then also send the original certificate along with the handshake. Then, the first time you visited a TLS site, it could pop up a big warning saying 'This traffic is intercepted by firewall.institution.edu, do you consent?' and have a little exclamation mark in the toolbar to always indicate that it's being intercepted. The browser would have to trust both the interception certificate (which encrypts between the firewall and the endpoint inside the internal network) as well as getting the original certificate and deciding whether to trust that (which you don't get now).

<comment><USER15> Why do you think it's ok to spy on your users on a school network?

<comment><USER13> The students didn't buy the computers. I did.

Edit: And before anyone starts with the "you shouldn't spy on your users" bullshit: Bollocks. If you want that, welcome to laa laa fantasy land where we all breathe sand.

You _will_ use computers or networks in which the operator is recording everything you do. You can either work within that assumption, or you can stick your fingers in your ears and pretend.

And no, I don't use my employer's[+] computer for anything personally- sensitive and I don't install their shite on mine in order to access their network and when I do use their computer I expect they will watch everything I do even if they don't because I'm using their equipment. I do my real work on my own computer or I don't do my work. The employer is well within its rights to suck on it.

[+] There is no reason why the same should not apply to schools, libraries or any other institution in which people are permitted to use items owned or services controlled by others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Isn't it pretty much standard for such organizations to have decrypting and re-encrypting proxy, with their own CA that clients have to trust?

If they do, I don't see how forward secrecy changes much, and they just have to tap the plain text from the proxy.

If they don't, I'm seriously surprised.

<comment><USER17> The original message does make dubious claims, but a little later in the thread, the real issue becomes clear.

from [https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/1n1tQSGKMBJKsmuCe-...](https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/1n1tQSGKMBJKsmuCe- j-GPACvZw)

"With TLS 1.2 we can ask the end user to take a Wireshark trace and then decrypt it with the RSA private key. With TLS 1.3 we will have to rely on the SSLKEYLOGFILE feature in Firefox and Chrome, so we want it to be available. Unfortunately, Microsoft does not allow this functionality, which is a problem in a TLS 1.3 only environment."

As I understand their argument, if you control the server (and hence private key and cipher suite) you can store the traffic without MITM and later decrypt it if needed. With forward secrecy, that isn't possible.

<comment><USER18> If you control the server, you can decrypt any time you want, because obviously if you were able to decrypt at one time, you can do so later.

<comment><USER17> That's the whole point of forward secrecy. For the one session you use a temporary key which can't be recovered later. You can only decrypt the stream if you store that key.

<comment><USER19> well your proxy can just store everything in Plain Text? I mean if you really need to decrypt it later you already saved it somewhere, however you can just store the plain text since your proxy already has that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Exporting of ephemeral keys: This solution has scalability and security > problems on large, busy servers where it is not possible to know ahead of > time which session is going to be the important one.

I don't buy it.

You can store entire sessions worth of data, but can't also optionally save metadata?

Yes, I realise you may not want to store it for all connections, but if you don't want to have a "should I store" oracle inline with the connections, then do it async and skip writing it do disk/storage service once the answer comes back.

</comment><comment><USER21> Well, _that_ was kind of a burn.

Was the argument by the bankers basically a complaint that retooling would be very expensive? and/or that employee surveillance would be more difficult? (yeah, I'm sure _everyone_ is a fan of that!)

<comment><USER22> mitm surveillance of employee traffic is basically a cornerstone of enterprise security since those networks are designed to be very squishy on the inside. Thankfully Google is turning the assumption that the perimeter needs to extend to your rather vulnerable clients on its head but that will be several years before it's productized enough that middle managers will be convinced to buy it by a VAR over a game of golf.

<comment><USER13> That's basically putting the cart before the horse.

Security is hard. Hard problems are easier when there are fewer of them. It's easier to build one big wall than lots of little ones.

Surveillance of employees is a cornerstone of enterprise security because humans are inherently untrustworthy. One part of the solution to this problem is to define a distinction (using golf[+] of all things as an analogy) between the rough, the fairway and the green. Because defining a border between the rough and the course is easy, and untrustworthy humans aren't all that bad most of the time, the distinction between the fairway and the green easily becomes blurred.

While employers may polish up the distinction between their workaday desktops and their locked-down servers they will never abandon the difference, and nor should they, between _their_ systems and _everyone else 's_ systems.

[+] You have my permission to use this analogy with your manglers.

<comment><USER22> Just to be clear I'm referring to monitoring traffic for security threats. Not for things like stealing source code or applying for jobs or whatever BS some employers are paranoid about.

The reason it's a cornerstone is because your clients, especially laptops, are huge gaping attack vectors. They visit other networks and browse the web. Even if they're browsing the web 100% of the time through a web proxy it's not going to catch everything.

And it's for that same reason Google decided to shrink their perimeter. The distinction between their systems and someone else's is still maintained, but they've accepted and embraced the fact that the laptops used by their employees can and will get owned. So instead of acting as a bridge between the internet and internal squishy networks they sit out there with the internet.

But I'm hardly doing the concept justice. In fact I'm probably hurting it more than helping it. If you haven't read it Google discusses the security concepts in a short paper you can get here: [http://research.google.com/pubs/pub43231.html](http://research.google.com/pubs/pub43231.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A more readable link:

[https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/CzjJB1g0uFypY8UDdr...](https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/CzjJB1g0uFypY8UDdr6P9SCQBqA)

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't quite get what they are currently doing. Is it that they have some kind of Internal mitm proxy that proxies every TLS session with external hosts, recording the conversation for later offline analysis? Why wouldn't they still be able to do that? Or are they just worried about their ability to intercept internal conversations? I'd be really interested to know what a typical bank security architecture looks like, does anyone have a reference for further reading perhaps?

<comment><USER24> They don't MITM, they record sessions and later decrypt out-of-band as needed.

With TLS 1.3, they would need to MITM, which require infrastructure changes and potentially affects the performance.

They are complaining TLS 1.3 forces them to do work they otherwise wouldn't have to do.

<comment><USER23> But how doe they get access to the keys for the session without modifying the end hosts or MITM'ing the traffic?

<comment><USER24> > without modifying the end hosts

They have full control of the end hosts. That's why the group policy forces you to use Internet Explorer instead of letting you use Firefox.

<comment><USER23> Hmm, but why can't they just then record the session keys as before even for forward secure TLS (presuming we are talking about clients inside the bank initiating TLS sessions to external parties)?

<comment><USER13> Ah well they're banks you see and "doing things" requires spending money which they're rather averse to.

Also never use the word just outside the context of law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> _" Like many enterprises, financial institutions depend upon the ability to decrypt TLS traffic to implement data loss protection, intrusion detection and prevention, malware detection, packet capture and analysis, and DDoS mitigation. Unlike some other businesses, financial institutions also rely upon TLS traffic decryption to implement fraud monitoring and surveillance of supervised employees."_

I'm at lost here. What's the point of having TLS if it can be easily decrypted? Why not to ditch it altogether then? All this argument sounds somewhat fishy, just because your practices rely on insecure behavior, it doesn't mean it shouldn't be fixed for the rest of us.

<comment><USER10> TLS can be decrypted with private key. Just keep your private key secret. For example, this feature is useful for debugging TLS encrypted communication with server by capturing data and decrypting it using WireShark. Forward secrecy breaks that.

<comment><USER23> Ok I'm missing something here. If an internal bank employee initiates a TLS session to an external service, the only key the bank could hope to access is the session key if it has control over the end host, in which case it can just store the session key for each connection. What private key are you referring too if not the session key?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It may well be that from a business perspective a greater threat to banking is coming from insiders, failing systems and incompetence than from outsiders exploiting TLS weaknesses. To those wondering why banks are worried about their employees communication even internally keep in mind that there have been very expensive judgements related to banking employees conspiring to break legal or other regulatory rules.

The alternative namely monitoring on the end points is hard to implement comprehensively and a lot more expensive.

If (and that is a big iff) the banking use case really justifies a special and weaker transport protocol then maybe it should be upon the banks bear the whole cost of doing that. It would also clearly assign the responsibility when things may fail from a security perspective. Maybe the end point alternative looks then more attractive.

</comment><comment><USER27> _"...almost all of whom are running TLS internally and have significant, security-critical investments in out-of-band TLS decryption. Like many enterprises, financial institutions depend upon the ability to decrypt TLS traffic to implement data loss protection, intrusion detection and prevention, malware detection, packet capture and analysis, and DDoS mitigation. Unlike some other businesses, financial institutions also rely upon TLS traffic decryption to implement fraud monitoring and surveillance of supervised employees."_

And thus essentially defeating the entire purpose of TLS. Can you please help us continue doing this with the new version of TLS too. Thanks. Love. Big Banks.

<comment><USER28> Only sometimes.

The argument here could be whether you, as an individual working for an employer on employer-controlled hardware, have the right to communications that cannot be viewed by the employer at their discretion on those systems.

Having that capability (undecryptable communication) on an exceptional basis (e.g. only a few sites or methods do it) might be grounds for blocking any instances of the protocol that negotiate that level at the border.

Having every secure site do it would result in not being able to passively store and only decode the communications that, say, you have occasion to go inspect later for discovery reasons, and instead would require MITMing and downgrading all connections (and storing the traffic, at best, re-encrypted with a different key).

(Note that I'm not voicing an opinion on the topic, just observing that there are legitimate reasons to desire this functionality from several perspectives, which do not necessarily imply wanting a backdoor in the protocol in the general case.)

<comment><USER29> From a technical standpoint, the desire of <bank> to monitor all communications of a stockbroker in an easy and effective manner and being able to decrypt historical captured is identical to the desire of <evil government> to do the same for their civil rights activists.

From a protocol perspective, you can't distinguish it - any new protocol either makes monitoring harder for everyone or easier for everyone, without checking if your reason is good or bad.

If we choose to make communications more private, then yes, the ability to monitor stuff will suffer even if someone has a legitimate and reasonable reason to need this ability. Too bad, we've made a choice that the security of the masses is more important than this. I acknowledge that this change will hurt the banks for the reasons given above, but in this case hurting them is an unavoidable cost of helping most everyone else.

<comment><USER28> Sure, from a protocol perspective, arranging it so nobody, even the original owner, can decrypt the communication after the fact is beneficial, except that now, you end up with people downgrading such communications or storing the session secret keys, the latter probably by patching software crypto implementations where possible (since I doubt any of the major crypto implementations would agree to storing those keys even with an --i-am-a- developer-really-stop-bothering-me flag).

I hope I'm wrong. I don't want to end up in a world where all enterprises actively MITM and negotiate down to non-PFS protocols to avoid this, or hack up the software stacks on their machines to circumvent this (with all the overhead that implies - echoes of "requires Internet Explorer 5" for how old some of this will probably get between updates).

I just don't think that the people who make use of this functionality are going to let it go, no matter what it takes.

(That's not to say it's not worth trying, to be clear - I just foresee it ending poorly for everyone except for private individuals, and possibly even them if ISPs start requiring you accept their MITM CA.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Late to the party.. heh, they agreed to remove RSA Key Transport back in April 2014, implemented in draft 02

[https://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/tls/current/msg12266.h...](https://www.ietf.org/mail- archive/web/tls/current/msg12266.html)

> The consensus in the room at IETF-89 was to remove RSA key transport from > TLS 1.3. If you have concerns about this decision please respond on the TLS > list by April 11, 2014.

[https://threatpost.com/tls-1-3-working-group-has- consensus-t...](https://threatpost.com/tls-1-3-working-group-has-consensus-to- deprectate-rsa-key-transport/105916/)

[https://github.com/tlswg/tls13-spec/commit/5d861d58b8a5ef2e8...](https://github.com/tlswg/tls13-spec/commit/5d861d58b8a5ef2e8628f39063ebf580fafe04e7)

</comment><comment><USER31> Welcome to almost two weeks ago? Given how many people seem to be upvoting and commenting on this link, was everyone else on vacation for some holiday I don't celebrate when this came up multiple times before?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12560284](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12560284)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12561004](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12561004)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12563481](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12563481)

<comment><USER32> This had a much catchier, editorialized title earlier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Here's the exchange, I found this hard to read without word-wrapping:

        > On 22 Sep 2016, at 20:27, BITS Security <BITSSecurity at fsroundtable.org> wrote:
        >
        > To:  IETF TLS 1.3 Working Group Members
        >
        > My name is Andrew Kennedy and I work at BITS, the technology policy
        > division of the Financial Services Roundtable
        > (http://www.fsroundtable.org/bits).  My organization represents
        > approximately 100 of the top 150 US-based financial services
        > companies including banks, insurance, consumer finance, and asset
        > management firms.
        >
        > I manage the Technology Cybersecurity Program, a CISO-driven forum
        > to investigate emerging technologies; integrate capabilities into
        > member operations; and advocate member, sector, cross-sector, and
        > private-public collaboration.
        >
        > While I am aware and on the whole supportive of the significant
        > contributions to internet security this important working group has
        > made in the last few years I recently learned of a proposed change
        > that would affect many of my organization's member institutions: the
        > deprecation of RSA key exchange.
        >
        > Deprecation of the RSA key exchange in TLS 1.3 will cause
        > significant problems for financial institutions, almost all of whom
        > are running TLS internally and have significant, security-critical
        > investments in out-of-band TLS decryption.
        >
        > Like many enterprises, financial institutions depend upon the
        > ability to decrypt TLS traffic to implement data loss protection,
        > intrusion detection and prevention, malware detection, packet
        > capture and analysis, and DDoS mitigation.  Unlike some other
        > businesses, financial institutions also rely upon TLS traffic
        > decryption to implement fraud monitoring and surveillance of
        > supervised employees.  The products which support these capabilities
        > will need to be replaced or substantially redesigned at significant
        > cost and loss of scalability to continue to support the
        > functionality financial institutions and their regulators require.
        >
        > The impact on supervision will be particularly severe.  Financial
        > institutions are required by law to store communications of certain
        > employees (including broker/dealers) in a form that ensures that
        > they can be retrieved and read in case an investigation into
        > improper behavior is initiated.  The regulations which require
        > retention of supervised employee communications initially focused on
        > physical and electronic mail, but now extend to many other forms of
        > communication including instant message, social media, and
        > collaboration applications.  All of these communications channels
        > are protected using TLS.
        >
        > The impact on network diagnostics and troubleshooting will also be
        > serious.  TLS decryption of network packet traces is required when
        > troubleshooting difficult problems in order to follow a transaction
        > through multiple layers of infrastructure and isolate the fault
        > domain.  The pervasive visibility offered by out-of-band TLS
        > decryption can't be replaced by MITM infrastructure or by endpoint
        > diagnostics.  The result of losing this TLS visibility will be
        > unacceptable outage times as support groups resort to guesswork on
        > difficult problems.
        >
        > Although TLS 1.3 has been designed to meet the evolving security
        > needs of the Internet, it is vital to recognize that TLS is also
        > being run extensively inside the firewall by private enterprises,
        > particularly those that are heavily regulated.  Furthermore, as more
        > applications move off of the desktop and into web browsers and
        > mobile applications, dependence on TLS is increasing.
        >
        > Eventually, either security vulnerabilities in TLS 1.2, deprecation
        > of TLS 1.2 by major browser vendors, or changes to regulatory
        > standards will force these enterprises - including financial
        > institutions - to upgrade to TLS 1.3.  It is vital to financial
        > institutions and to their customers and regulators that these
        > institutions be able to maintain both security and regulatory
        > compliance during and after the transition from TLS 1.2 to TLS 1.3.
        >
        > At the current time viable TLS 1.3-compliant solutions to problems
        > like DLP, NIDS/NIPS, PCAP, DDoS mitigation, malware detection, and
        > monitoring of regulated employee communications appear to be
        > immature or nonexistent.  There are serious cost, scalability, and
        > security concerns with all of the currently proposed alternatives to
        > the existing out-of-band TLS decryption architecture:
        >
        > - End point monitoring: This technique does not replace the
        >   pervasive network visibility that private enterprises will lose
        >   without the RSA key exchange.  Ensuring that every endpoint has a
        >   monitoring agent installed and functioning at all times is vastly
        >   more complex than ensuring that a network traffic inspection
        >   appliance is present and functioning.  In the case of monitoring
        >   of supervised employee communications, moving the monitoring
        >   function to the endpoint raises new security concerns focusing on
        >   deliberate circumvention - because in the supervision use case
        >   the threat vector is the possessor of the endpoint.
        >
        > - Exporting of ephemeral keys: This solution has scalability and
        >   security problems on large, busy servers where it is not possible
        >   to know ahead of time which session is going to be the important
        >   one.
        >
        > - Man-in-the-middle: This solution adds significant latency, key
        >   management complexity, and production risk at each of the needed
        >   monitoring layers.
        >
        > Until the critical concerns surrounding enterprise security,
        > employee supervision, and network troubleshooting are addressed as
        > effectively as internet MITM and surveillance threats have been, we,
        > on behalf of our members, are asking the TLS 1.3 Working Group to
        > delay Last Call until a workable and scalable solution is identified
        > and vetted, and ultimately adopted into the standard by the TLS 1.3
        > Working Group.
        >
        > Sincerely,
        >
        > Andrew Kennedy
        > Senior Program Manager, BITS

The reply:

        To: BITS Security <BITSSecurity at fsroundtable.org>
        Subject: Re: [TLS] Industry Concerns about TLS 1.3
        From: "Paterson, Kenny" <Kenny.Paterson at rhul.ac.uk>
        Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2016 19:14:25 +0000
        [...]

        Hi Andrew,

        My view concerning your request: no.

        Rationale: We're trying to build a more secure internet.

        Meta-level comment:

        You're a bit late to the party. We're metaphorically speaking at the
        stage of emptying the ash trays and hunting for the not quite empty
        beer cans.

        More exactly, we are at draft 15 and RSA key transport disappeared
        from the spec about a dozen drafts ago. I know the banking industry is
        usually a bit slow off the mark, but this takes the biscuit.

        Cheers,

        Kenny

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't get it. This can't be about decrypting traffic between internal clients and external servers, because the bank doesn't have the RSA key in the first place. It also seems unlikely that it's about decrypting traffic between external clients and internal servers, because (a) that's not what the bank rep said and (b) the server would just log the traffic.

That leaves two cases: internal client <-> internal server and internal client <-> internal MITM. For both of these cases, I see two easy solutions:

1\. Log the session key.

2\. Define a custom TLS extension that contains the session key encrypted with against a known bank-controlled public key and have the server/MITM send this extension after the handshake. Problem solved.

In any event, the internal client <-> external server case is highly problematic. What's to stop, say, Snapchat from running an extra unauthenticated DH exchange in JavaScript and encrypting all the application layer traffic against the resulting session key? The MITM proxy won't notice unless it's very clever indeed and then all those nice MITM proxy logs are useless.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is exactly the clash between governments (here financial regulation) and cyberlibertarians I wrote about earlier this year:

[http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2904894](http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2904894)

What have we gained in security, if TLS1.3 is basically illegal to use for banks ?

Who wins if browsers refuses to connect to web-banking which operates inside the boundaries of the law ?

<comment><USER36> But they're claiming it will require overhauling their infrastructure and cost money to do -- not that it's impossible to support, or that TLS 1.3 will "be illegal" if their demands are not met (this is just nonsense and 100% FUD on part of your comment, honestly -- and I say that as someone who thinks highly of your work). Furthermore there's no clear evidence TLS 1.2 will be deprecated anytime soon, so these people have years to sort out the details with their vendors to have replacements in-flight. Banks have money and connections. They'll survive this and evolve.

In any case, they could have made their concerns available earlier to the standards body. Like, over two and a half years ago (RSA key exchange was removed in early 2014). This is hardly the fault of "cyberlibertarians" or whatever, this is just these people being out of touch. The alternative here would be that these guys get to butt into the standardization process and demand changes at the very last moment, after years of work, with no negative impacts or consequences for them -- for what is ultimately a small portion of the overall internet.

Why would we want that? It completely undermines the authority of the IETF and the entire point of a standards process if "really important" people can just completely railroad it and demand changes on a whim with no consequences to themselves. Frankly, completely ignoring the actual _content_ of the request, this alone is pretty bad behavior on their part.

Why we should worsen the security of billions of people, and introduce complexity into a vital internet protocol, so that those dorks can have slightly higher profit margins -- I dunno. Designing a security protocol is hard enough. If they didn't want to pay attention to the conversation, and now want to cry their pockets will take a hit -- well, maybe they'll learn and be more proactive next time and save themselves some cash.

> Who wins if browsers refuses to connect to web-banking which operates inside > the boundaries of the law ?

Nobody ever said TLS 1.3 would be illegal for banks, that browsers are going to immediately drop TLS 1.2 after this (both of these two being a requirement for your prediction to be true -- lol, and also completely asinine) making it refuse to connect to a "law abiding bank", or that moving to TLS 1.3 would be literally impossible for them forever and can't be solved.

This is just complete FUD dude, c'mon. Unless you're actually interested in the answers to completely nonsense hypotheticals made up out of thin air, I guess...

<comment><USER13> Thankyou for giving possibly the only coherent argument against this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> While they were very late to the party, this is important for some sectors. Not the reliance on specific tech (RSA) but being able to go back and decrypt their own traffic later, with appropriate keys.

They need to routinely spy on some of their people,amd trace what happens to their money. Not sure why this is a problem. Their use-cases are different to (say) a user of Signal.

<comment><USER38> > They need to routinely spy on some [..] people

Unfortunately this is very far removed from the goals of the IETF, who is striving for a more secure internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I never knew that it was an accepted practice to have MITM techniques for monitoring activities in cases like the author notes in that thread. I'm not an expert but is this common? I haven't heard something like this before.

</comment><comment><USER40> Well, North Korea is not complaining about TLS 1.3, why would banks have to? Their proxy servers are already MITM platforms that meet their needs for security.

<comment><USER38> Probably because Bank employees/customers use modern browsers/devices which will at some point drop support for anything but TLS 1.3. I don't think this will happen in North Korea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Wouldn't this be solved by having multiple SSL offload reverse proxies at the points you want to decrypt traffic?</comment>


NSA misrepresented scope of data collection to secret court - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/21/politics/nsa-fisa-court/index.html

<comment><USER2> This article seems very pro-government's side of the story.</comment>


10 steps to finding your CTO, guaranteed - <AUTHOR> http://joshrweinstein.com/post/28350379537

<comment><USER2> So, this is a pretty decent advice. Basically, the author's idea is that if you:

\- Treat finding a CTO like a full-time job,

\- Learn to build some basic HTML,

\- Read a book on Ruby / Git / Rails,

You should be able to find a _good_ CTO for your company.

Unfortunately, while this is some pretty good starter advice, I doubt this would help you find a _great_ CTO, first engineer, whatever.

Smart people typically want to be around other smart people, and the idea that building a simple HTML page and reading through a single book will let you find an amazing programmer to really build your product is, unfortunately, not realistic.

Great programmers look for:

\- Interesting technical challenges,

\- To be treated as equals, and have a large amount of influence over technologies, product decisions, etc.,

\- Highly motivated, smart people they can learn from,

\- Great compensation,

\- A very strong sense of purpose and direction.

If you're a business person who can offer all of the above, you'll probably have a great chance of finding a really awesome tech person to work with.

Unless you plan on really getting great with HTML or something of the sort, it's probably a better idea to instead learn to use a tool like balsamiq (<http://www.balsamiq.com/>) and make some really amazing wireframes instead. At least doing things this way, you'll have a really clean skeleton to show off to people, and help them understand your vision.

If you're looking for a programmer out there--best of luck!</comment>


Show HN: Amazing Parenting Resources - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=us.grandlegacy.resources

<comment><AUTHOR> We just released this new Android app with a simple premise of delivering one curated parenting resource everyday to your phone. There are already a ton of sites/apps out there that have a lot of quality content about parenting. This is the beginning of our effort to streamline it.

Parents are already very busy, so we figured getting exposed to something small and digestible everyday can consistently help them become better at their job. A more elaborate read on why we created the app - [http://blog.grandlegacy.us/post/105338611099/why-we- created-...](http://blog.grandlegacy.us/post/105338611099/why-we-created- amazing-parenting-resources)

Any feedback is much appreciated. Thanks.</comment>


How I got techcrunched and some stats - <AUTHOR> http://robertomartinez.info/posts/how_i_got_techcrunched.htm

<comment><USER2> So they weren't interested because they didn't like your _font_? Your site is awesome, honestly. Did anyone else's wtf-meter go off reading that?

<comment><USER3> Like OP posted before, it's probably more that he was on the frontpage here.

<comment><AUTHOR> same impression

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you have a sense what kind of lasting user base comes back from the TC referrals?

I was pretty impressed that we got a 25% conversion rate for signups on textWeight.com from a TC write up. This was especially amazing, given that you have to give your personal phone number. I think we've had about 10% attrition in the past 2 weeks, but otherwise a very healthy user base.

<comment><AUTHOR> -Actually the TC visitors returned less than the others. -I got more Twitter followers during the TC-HN spike than in the others. -The visitors who returned the most are from xatakafoto, it seems they really like the Flikr channel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's always inspiring to hear someone's launch narrative, but I don't agree with a couple of your conclusions.

Is Techcrunch that important to get traction? They sent a ~2 day traffic spike your way, but after that not much. Is it the sacred cow of launching?

I agree with your fix quickly mentality, but coming away with the conclusion that you should listen to the critic without context is a bit rash.

You changed your site for 1 blog post. I do agree with their advice, but what if you where told that the logo was terrible, or your navigation scheme was wrong? How much would you be willing to change for the coverage, and at that point who's site is it?

Wow this kinda turned into a rant. I don't want the groupthink to lend itself toward; bending to the will of a tech blog, because it's the only way to launch.

<comment><AUTHOR> The TC spike doesn't matter. The important thing is that TC is The source for other blogs around the world. I can't submit my site to a Japanese blog for example (I don't write this language), but a Japanese blogger read the TC post and reposted it. Multiply that for 100 and you can see where do the 70K Google results come from.

I don't change the design to appear there. But 60% of the users at that moment ( my girlfriend and TC) didn't like the font and to be sincere I wasn't sure anyway. Honestly I don't think that the font change made the site techcrunch worthy, I think the HN frontpage was most important.

We are always bending to others, everyone fixes the limit of tolerance according our goals and means.

<comment><USER6> I agree. One of the most important thing is that great PR means tons of valuable links. And in the SEO game, the formula is: "get the links, win the game".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is similar to my experience when Glancely was on TC. The TC traffic was great, but the Lifehacker/Gizmodo traffic that came later were actually bigger. Beyond that, there's some credibility in saying your startup was on TechCrunch, Lifehacker, etc.

It's great to be written up in TC, but the real benefits come from more than just the article itself. A TC article is a great accomplishment for a startup and has benefits beyond the article. But it's just a step, so don't celebrate for too long.

</comment><comment><USER8> You were pretty forward and quick in your intro emails. Not being a TC author but understanding that they get a ton of emails, I think you hit the nail on the head with how to get their attention.

<comment><AUTHOR> I read some posts of how to get covered. Guy Kawasaki's, Jason Labaptiste's and TC guidelines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I presume that the spike includes both TechCrunch and Hacker News. Based on 22 upvotes, I guess you got about 1-2'000 hits from HN, so that works out at about 7-8'000 hits from TC over 3 days?

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right. However the HN spike was of very short duration, just the 2-3 hours it was on the frontpage.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, that matches my experiences of a 22-point post. Thanks for clarifying!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sans-serif is almost always a best choice than serif for UI Copy. I'd left Arial as a second option in favor of Helvetica, though.

Congratulations btw, Roberto, you are a fighter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Armando. I'll keep that in mind. When is Georgia a best option?</comment></comment>


Mysterious Mountains Hidden Beneath Antarctic Ice Revealed - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100611/sc_livescience/mysteriousmountainshiddenbeneathantarcticicerevealed

<comment><USER2> Ha! H. P. Lovecraft was right after all. He wrote his classic story "At the Mountains of Madness" about these mountains (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Mountains_of_Madness>):

"The story is written in first-person perspective by the geologist William Dyer, a professor from Miskatonic University. He writes to disclose hitherto unknown and closely kept secrets in the hope that he can deter a planned and much publicized scientific expedition to Antarctica. On a previous expedition there, a party of scholars from Miskatonic University, led by Dyer, discovered fantastic and horrific ruins and a dangerous secret beyond a range of mountains taller than the Himalayas."

OK, so he got the "taller than Himalayas" part wrong (article says 8000 feet), but he wrote this story in 1931, when these mountains were not yet discovered! The radar image looks suspiciously similar to Lovecrafts's description of the stone city of cubes and cones. He warns at the end:

"It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth's dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be let alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests. "</comment>


Judge: Gene Patents Are Invalid - <AUTHOR> http://techdirt.com/articles/20100329/1506458769.shtml

<comment><USER2> I like to see signs of emerging sanity in the patent world. Possibly that will head us back to the sanity of killing lots and lots (hopefully all) software patents.

<comment><USER3> Would this company have made the breast cancer detection procedure that they had a patent on if they did not have the ability to protect it with a patent?

In the software world, the case against patents is very strong. In biotech R&D costs can be in the millions or billions of dollars. It's a mistake to reflexively apply the hacker's justified aversion to patents to other fields.

<comment><USER4> > Would this company have made the breast cancer detection procedure that they > had a patent on if they did not have the ability to protect it with a > patent?

According to my reading of the case, the company didn't invent a breast cancer procedure. Instead, they found a gene that has some involvement in breast cancer and tried to claim suppressing said gene. They lost because their patent didn't disclose or claim anything relevant to suppressing said gene.

IFRC, the judge said that they didn't invent anything, which they pretty much conceded. Since you can't patent discoveries, only uses of discoveries to do something, they lost.

<comment><USER5> The judge also slams them for trying to patent the scientific method (see either page 152 or 153, if I remember correctly).

PDF: [http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/2010-3-29-AMPvUSPTO- Opinion...](http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/2010-3-29-AMPvUSPTO-Opinion.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good job Judge Robert Sweet!

The consequences of these patents are quite monstrous.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like a sane judge.

Software patents might be brought down this way too. Koza used genetic programming to build circuits that were patented (butterfly filter IIRC).

I wish the software patent nightmare would turn itself inside out and morph into a contributors authoring papers (not patents) and submitting them to relevant journals. The result might be more alternative approaches, prior examples that perform better, etc. I think it would change the industry and the products it builds. Just a dream maybe.

</comment><comment> brown9-2 Anyone have any idea what a ruling like this (if it stands) would do to companies like Monsanto?

<comment><USER5> Disclaimers: Am not in agriculture. Am not a lawyer. Am in human genetics.

Monsanto does things like this: (1) Take a plant that has agricultural value. (2) Add a pesticide-resistance gene to that plant. (3) Patent the seeds. (4) Sell at high price.

Given my (admittedly superficial) understanding of their practices, I do not think that most of their products would be particularly susceptible to this ruling. It is a bit murky because they may use gene patents to protect their special seeds, in which case one could imagine new 'generic competition' of sorts if they lose their gene patents but not their seed patents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> [...] Christopher Hansen, a lawyer for the ACLU, [...] said about 20 percent of human genes are patented.

That sounds absurd. Can anyone confirm/deny this?

<comment><USER9> Science 14 October 2005: Vol. 310. no. 5746, pp. 239 - 240 DOI: 10.1126/science.1120014

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: Intellectual Property Landscape of the Human Genome

Kyle Jensen and Fiona Murray

Summary: The impact of gene patents on downstream research and innovation are unknown, in part because of a lack of empirical data on the extent and nature of gene patenting. In this Policy Forum, the authors show that 20% of human gene DNA sequences are patented and that some genes are patented as many as 20 times. Unsurprisingly, genes associated with health and disease are more patented than the genome at large. The intellectual property rights for some genes can become highly fragmented between many owners, which suggests that downstream innovators may face considerable costs to gain access to gene- oriented technologies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> With people starting to biohack in their own backyard, I am unsure that the big corporations will be able to enforce their patents, thus their monopoly in the future.

All the judge did was to make corporations not to waste money going after biohackers in the not too distant future and force them to focus on generating valuable innovation.

So it might turn out to be a good thing for the would-be evil monopolists.

</comment><comment><USER11> The thing I have always wondered is, with Trademarks, in order to continue to stake a claim to them a company must vigorously defend the claim. So for instance, if trademark comes into wide use as a verb and the company that owns it fails to defend the trademark they risk losing the right to it.

With these patents on genes, technically anyone who procreates is infringing on the patent by copying the material without consent so when a company fails to prosecute parents for for patent infringement are they setting themselves up to lose that patent?

</comment><comment><USER12> Cautious excitement: How long until $EVILCORPORATION tries to get it appealed?

</comment><comment><USER13> very cool. It'll be interesting to see which companies file comments to the appeal

</comment><comment> doc-film Another invalid area is that of Monsanto who have bought up many seed companies, then proceeded to patent the seeds as their own. There is a rule that ideas and patentable concepts must not be public knowledge, or known about by others, prior to being patented. That's why you have to ensure no one knows about your idea, before you patent it, those that do should be under a ND.</comment>


Britain's teeth aren't that bad – but what of their rotten history? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/18/britains-teeth-dentistry-american-wits <comment><USER2> What is rotten is overcharging by dental practices. The NHS fee structure is extremely simple [1], yet because people do not research the charges, receptionists are able to easily mislead people.

Often the dentists do NHS and private work and they either tell flat out lies such as "that's not covered on the NHS", and/or suggest their brother/sister/best friend does the work privately) or just makes up random fees.

[http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/1781.aspx?CategoryID=74](http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/1781.aspx?CategoryID=74)

<comment><USER3> I don't know why this is being downvoted, this is completely accurate for the English NHS where the UDA system is used (Northern Ireland and Scotland have a different fee per item system).

Many English NHS dentists encourage patients to return for multiple treatments instead of doing all the work in one treatment.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure what you mean, things are charged by the course, no?

[http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/AboutNHSservices/dentists/Pages...](http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/AboutNHSservices/dentists/Pages/nhs- dental-charges.aspx)

>You will not be charged for individual items within a course of treatment. Depending on what you need to have done, you should only ever be asked to pay one charge for each complete course of treatment, even if you need to visit your dentist more than once to finish it. A course of treatment is finished when your dentist considers good oral health has been achieved.

Have I misunderstood what you meant?

<comment><USER5> I'm guessing that was GPs point, that receptionists and doctors will happily fail to inform patients of this, and rather make separately charged appointments.

While I haven't been to the dentist yet, after living in UK for a year I can testify that the bar for cheating or misleading customers is _very_ low.

As an example, taxi drivers usually pick a longer route than necessary, sometimes driving around the whole city. Especially if they perceive that you are not local.

<comment><USER2> Yes, that was exactly my point. And you are right abut the bar being very low! It drives me crazy

<comment><USER4> A record of the work done will be on file, have you taken this to the CQC or regulatory body?

<comment><USER2> I appreciate the onus is on me to provide evidence, and you've perhaps interpreted my comments as personal experiences only. I was referring to of cases of people I know - at least 3 instances this year alone - and I was not saying that every practice overcharges everyone.

However I myself have not been ripped off by an NHS dentist - mainly because I am aware of the bands. I would certainly take it further if they tried to.

<comment><USER4> I guess I'm finding it just surprising, I've never experienced anything like that, nor have I ever heard of it from anyone I know. I know plenty of people inside the NHS too, as well as simply many people who will have used these services. I'd have expected to see more problems if there really was a "very low bar for cheating customers".

There are regulatory bodies specifically for dentistry as well as for the NHS and sales and advertising. I would heavily suggest that they report this, there seems to be places to do so and I consider this an extremely important issue to solve if it's happening.

I'm not saying you're wrong, just that your friends experiences are so vastly different from my friends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Missing teeth is one thing but British orthodontics are far less commonly used than in America. America also has a far higher negative stigma against gaps or unstraight teeth.

</comment><comment><USER7> They ARE that bad. Anecdata perhaps, but come on - Americans really do have whiter teeth. At least the "privileged class" does. Downvote me to hell if you like still, I have lived both in UK and US for a decade and yes it is true, British teeth are nearly as bad as Japanese teeth (who don't use any flouride in their toothpaste, and it shows by the age of 40 or 50)

<comment><USER8> Hollywood white teeth == healthy?! How? To me they look bizarre, do normal Americans really have teeth like that? (serious question)

<comment><USER9> I'm an American with $10k or so into Orthodontia to make my teeth straight (I had gaps that were a big self-confidence issue for me) but no, seeing someone with insanely bleached white teeth definitely stands out in my head and always looks strange to me. I think there is a pretty big line between Hollywood White and Smoker Yellow.

To give a perspective, if it's needed, when I was in middle school (6th-8th) just about every single one of my friends at that point had either had, or was currently wearing braces of some sort.

I've now had braces 3 times (Invisalign actually) because my teeth won't stop moving. If I go a few days without wearing a retainer (I wear it nightly) they look different. A month or two without (I've lost the retainer before) and I'm going for round 4. Not sure if this is a genetic thing, or what, my cousins and sister have had the same thing happen, but I know plenty of other people who have never worn their retainers and barely had any movement.

<comment><USER10> "Braces" culture is interesting. I grew up in the rural southeast of the US, and while braces weren't unheard of they were uncommon. I have friends from new england who reported the opposite - most children, even those from poorer families, had braces.

<comment><USER9> Driving to the orthodontist was a major pain for my parents, so maybe that had something to do with it. They had to take off work early, pick me up at school, take me to the Ortho and wait around for an hour while the braces were aligned - EVERY month. I'd imagine it's even more of a pain for those in rural areas who have less options. The orthos next to schools made out like bandits. But my parents were also Military, so maybe that's just my experience.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: SwipeVideo, my first iOS App - <AUTHOR> http://swipevideo.com

<comment><USER2> I didn't completely understand on the first read what your app did. I read it as taking video of websites -- which is silly, but I thought I'd mention it.

Maybe "Pick your favorite sites" is unnecessary right up front? You mention later it integrates with my favorite sites and I see YouTube etc...

<comment><USER3> Same here - didn't get it at all at first. When I read "Pick your favorite sites. Take a video. Swipe to share.", I thought that it allowed you to share videos that you found on YouTube or other video sites, which didn't make any sense.

I get it now. Head a bit fried today so can't really think of a better strap- line right now though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I agree. I removed the 'pick your sites' copy altogether - I didn't really need it anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Love it. I'd add a video which shows the swiping motion, though.

P.S. which resources did you use to learn iOS programming?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you freshfey! Glad you like it!

I used the online Stanford CS139P class and some PeepCode screencasts to get started. I come from a web dev background so it was difficult for me at first to wrap my head around Objective-C, but after using those two resources I was able to understand the syntax (and the SDK) much more clearly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a similar idea but its based on candid videos where you choose your sharing site first, tag who will be in the video, hit record and once you hit stop it will automatically upload the video, right then and there. Videoroulette :D</comment>


Psychology shows: mistake to base our self-worth on our profess. achievements - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/990163/psychology-shows-its-a-big-mistake-to-base-our-self-worth-on-our-professional-achievements/ <comment><USER2> "Profess." What's that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Professional. I couldn't paste the whole title due to restrictions to 80 characters</comment></comment>


Email: Is It Time to Just Ban It? - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/ideacast/2016/09/email-is-it-time-to-just-ban-it?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=harvardbiz <comment><USER2> In a word: no.</comment>


Top-Performing College Grads Fall into the 'Prestige Career' Trap - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/s/story/a-culture-of-prestige-98c8671ceade <comment><USER2> There are two big misconceptions here:

1\. Consulting/banking are useless 2\. Harvard/Yale grads who go work for prestigious firms disappear, never to be heard from again.

The first point is disputable. There's a lot of really low-hanging fruit out there for improving management practices. Think of it as akin to hospitals improving results by insisting that doctors was their hands more. That's consistent with the randomized controlled trial that found consulting can improve productivity: [https://www.nber.org/papers/w16658.pdf](https://www.nber.org/papers/w16658.pdf)

The second point is insane. Consulting alumni go on to have tremendous impact. Sundar Pichai and Sheryl Sandberg both worked at McKinsey. Mitt Romney and Benjamin Netanyahu worked at BCG. Pick a random mid-size Silicon Valley company that's in its scaling phase, and the growth team is probably led by an ex-consultant or ex-banker. Places like Bain take someone with raw intelligence and give her a tremendously valuable set of skills that she didn't have as a fresh graduate. They don't expect most new hires to stick around indefinitely; they train you and then actively support you as you go figure out what you want to do next.

Disclosure: I worked for a top consulting firm out of college. Incidentally, I only lasted a bit more than a year - I hate Powerpoint - but now when I'm working on my side-project, I use those skills a lot more than the ones I learned working at a big software company.

</comment><comment><USER3> The article really puts an emphasis on recruitment and, as someone who went to a top 5 school and went into business for myself instead of joining the pack, it's not about that at all but rather about social conditioning and money.

These firms pay the best for your run of the mill pre-professional undergrad, it's really that simple. Unless you have a CS degree, the other primary high- paying careers require continuing education (M.D.s, etc).

We live in world where there are three basic economic classes; wealth, wealth management, and the proletariat. It's no surprise that the bulk of top school grads get herded into jobs that serve firms and the wealthy.

</comment><comment><USER4> Of note is that large tech companies are becoming prestige careers too.

</comment><comment><USER5> Would be interested in the fraction of consulting activities that are devoted to maximizing the returns in zero sum games.

Also, have you heard the phrase 'consultants are hired when the firm needs to fire someone.' The most important implications are not the firing.</comment>