this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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It was not long after the SSL thing that it became actively garbage. that was what, 2018?
But yeah, it's been bad since at least 2012.
What SSL thing?
Google stopped indexing all websites without SSL certificates in July 2018.
For example, darklyrics.com is a website I and many others grew up using as a resource to understanding lyrics. They've stubbornly not gotten an SSL because they transact 0 data beyond band name searches. However, without an SSL, they do not show up in Google search results.
This is one of literally millions of examples. Some more reasonable than others, but it still was a massive blow to the efficacy of their search.
Even if sites do not store user account data, such as passwords, ALL websites, and I mean ALL, handle user data, because merely accessing pages (urls) is user data.
Stubbornness is not a good reason not to setup SSL. Encryption should always be on, all the time, for everything.
And it's not only about user data, it would also expose the website to content spoofing in public wifi, which would for example allow the attacker to inject fishing content in the website.
SSL encrypts the data you're sending but it also ensures that you're communicating only with who you think you are. Without SSL you can't be confident about any of that.
If a website has literally no login system, there's nothing to phish.
There is honestly no reason to use SSL on a static website that has no login system and just displays some content.
IE a static blog or etc, where the only content on the website is just "look at this stuff, okay thank you!"
That's still my point, for example you could inject your own login system "create an account to keep track of your favorite artists, or some new shiny feature". For there you can get people's personal information, potentially a password they use on other services.
An URL is something the general public will trust, if the content can be messed with you repurpose the website's reputation. I took phishing as an example but even my not-so-creative and non-expert brain can think of other things : asking for donations, propaganda, advertising, censorship, ...
Ssl doest hide the url you're visiting
It does. Anyone sniffing the traffic can only see the domain.
Not if you use DNSSEC.
Yes it does. You can derive the domain from snooping DNS lookups but the URL is part of the encrypted get header.
The domain is a public part of TLS itself, SNI, for now.
Yeah we're need encrypted SNI. I hear it's coming soon.
Hmm I hate Google as much as the next guy and am actively trying to de-Google myself, but I'm not sure I can get behind the outrage here. Certificates are free and easy to obtain with LetsEncrypt, so there's really no excuse for sites not to accept unencrypted traffic these days. I'm sure Google does lots of things to delist the small guys and promote their big payers, but I don't think this is one of them.
Free certificates expose your subdomains. It's not more secure if you don't transact data in a meaningful way such as the example I provided.
I don't mean to insinuate that the example I provided is the majority of cases, and in the majority of cases, I do support sites with SSLs being indexed higher than websites without them, but I think the interstitial this website is not secure with the requirement of the advanced click followed by The continue anywaysclick...
Idk
Especially in 2018. Like, when we look at it from today's perspective, it's very easy to agree. And I do agree. But in 2018, it was not this way. Anyone who was a web developer with a bunch of clients, such as myself, was all the sudden in a very interesting hot seat. Not only did I need to try to upsell my clients, but I needed to convince them that not doing so was quite literally at their peril. It was difficult. And certain cases, it was impossible.
If your subdomains being public is a security issue then I'd argue something else is wrong. Otherwise you're using security through obscurity.
But I appreciate the insight and I see how this was a harder sell back when it happened. Thanks!
Not necessarily. Let's say you're a known contributor to a closed source project. You don't want people knowing you have a locally hosted gitlab instance at gitlab.mydomain.com, for example.
If that's the case, you shouldn't have one on your domain. If someone wants to know your subdomains, they can still brute force them
Expose your subdomains as in having all of them bundled into one certificate?
AFAIK, you absolutely can request different certs for each subdomain (in fact, that's what I've been doing for a while).
No, as in they are public record.
If you use a wildcard let's encrypt SSL to encrypt www.mydomain.com and VPS.mydomain.com and secret.mydomain.com and allmyporn.mydomain.com, and Plex.mydomain.com, and gitlab.mydomain.com
Then it is public record that mydomain.com has associated with it the CNAMES "www" "VPS" "secret" "allmyporn" "Plex" and "gitlab".
It can be looked up by anyone here. Just type in "%.yourdomain"
That is to say if you use a wildcard letsencrypt SSL on all your subdomains for you self hosting project, you're more exposed than want to be.
No it's not. I have several wildcards. Your tool doesn't show any of the subdomains i have then used on. Go hit %.saik0.com and show me where lemmy.saik0.com shows up. I'll wait.
Bro check again... This time actually follow instructions.
Search for LEMMY.SAIK0.COM... Notice it's not there even though my instance clearly exists and has an SSL cert.
What you're seeing is certs from over a year ago. You're seeing domains I registered specifically. eg... not ones I've associated with a wildcard.
Next time make sure you're actually right before you act so confident.
Here's a list of subdomains that are under a wildcard SSL cert... That will not show up in that list since they were never registered for their own cert and only EVER operated under the wildcard one.
convert.saik0.com
esign.saik0.com
lemmy.saik0.com
wordgame.saik0.com
yt.saik0.com
And there's plenty more I could point out. But if you follow instructions and actually search, you'll see that those do exist as accessible subdomains and do not show up in the crt.sh tool.
Edit: LMFAO so you downvoted me... checked my shit and realized that you're wrong. Deleted your message and kept your downvote in place.
Edit2: For those coming after the fact and maybe not liking my initial tone at the top there. I mirrored the tone they posted in.
While I agree the issue you raise does make sense in some situations, it derivates from the initial concern : if you don't want your domain listed in a DNS record you certainly don't want it to be indexed by a search engine :p