this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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I'm a developer and would appreciate you going into more specifics about which certificates you suggest pinning.
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.
And your software stops functioning after X years due to this.
Don’t do this, this is a bad idea.
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.