this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I'm a developer and would appreciate you going into more specifics about which certificates you suggest pinning.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

I'm saying that if you're a developer of software that communicates between two nodes across the internet, you shouldn't rely on X.509 because the common root stores have historically been filled with compromised CAs, which would let someone with that CA decrypt and view the messages you send with TLS.

You should mint your own certs and pin their fingerprints so that your application will only send messages if the fingerprint of the cert on the other end matches your trusted cert.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago

OK, so cases where you control both ends of the communication. Thanks for the clarification.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (2 children)

And your software stops functioning after X years due to this.

Don’t do this, this is a bad idea.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

Technically all certificates are pinned, especially with public CAs, most OS package the latest CA certs which will all go out of style within 10 years or so. You can see this by loading up any old distro or defunct version of windows.