boringssl VS istlsfastyet.com

I have nothing constructive to add except that OpenSSL has a long history of producing vulnerabilities so much so that Google has created their own fork publicly available here: https://boringssl.googlesource.com/boringssl/ (used in chromium, chrome, and android).

> Large web companies like Google implement their own encryption stack anyway.

Google uses BoringSSL[1], which is another OpenSSL fork. I believe AWS uses a mix of OpenSSL and Boring SSL (someone can correct me!).

So it's "their own encryption stack," but that stack is at least originally comprised of OpenSSL's code. They've probably done an admirable job of refactoring it, but API and ABI constraints still apply (it's very hard to change the massive body of existing code that assumes OpenSSL's APIs).

[1]: https://boringssl.googlesource.com/boringssl/

OpenSSL gets plenty of funding but we need to put more funding into TLS implementations that have a bigger focus on security and stability like boringssl, nss, go's tls, and rustls. It's 2022 and we have both languages better suited for this and tools to make existing languages safer and more robust, it's incredible to me that we aren't even more anxious over the current state of openssl.

It was not built for chromium AFAIK

To quote: https://boringssl.googlesource.com/boringssl/

BoringSSL arose because Google used OpenSSL for many years in various ways and, over time, built up a large number of patches that were maintained while tracking upstream OpenSSL. As Google's product portfolio became more complex, more copies of OpenSSL sprung up and the effort involved in maintaining all these patches in multiple places was growing steadily.

Currently BoringSSL is the SSL library in Chrome/Chromium, Android (but it's not part of the NDK) and a number of other apps/programs.

Use Google's fork of OpenSSL which exists because Google likes to do it's own weird things sometimes. This doesn't say anything about "OpenSSL is considered dangerous", it says "This allows us to mostly avoid compromises in the name of compatibility. It works for us, but it may not work for you."

And this is why projects like https://boringssl.googlesource.com/boringssl/ exist

The immediate effect of Heartbleed was the OpenBSD folk [1] and Google [2] forking OpenSSL.

There's a talk from Bob Beck of OpenBSD on pruning OpenSSL, it's pretty hilarious [3].

In that case open source was at least able to react appropriately, even if it didn't act preemptively.

[1]: https://www.libressl.org

[2]: https://boringssl.googlesource.com/boringssl/

[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnBbhXBDmwU

I doubt the reference to Musk's brand is intentional. It's more likely that it's a reference/homage to BoringSSL (https://github.com/google/boringssl) and "boring tech" in general that is purposefully designed to be minimalist, simple to use, and narrow in scope.

> You want your website to work on vintage computers where they run super old browsers? Then you probably need a HTTP version of the website without TLS/SSL as it's not gonna be accessible otherwise.

That's incredibly niche. I don't think it deserves to be an example of "meme needs to die".

> Running a software/package repository/registry where every package is signed and verified locally? No need for TLS/SSL and it would just slow down downloading 1000s of packages as handshaking does add latency to requests.

Need some secure way to pass around the SHA256 (or whatever) hash you're using for verification.

And thinking of "memes that need to die", https://istlsfastyet.com suggests this isn't as bad as I think you think it is.

Not really... TLS is pretty much unnoticable on "modern" hardware. https://istlsfastyet.com/

So it's not correct to say that simply using TLS is faster than using TCP (see here). It is accurate to say that securing a connection allows engineers to take advantage of some incredibly clever work that greatly accelerates connection speed, and that wouldn't be possible without the strong security guarantees provided by modern encryption.

It was a big complaint with TLS as it was coming onto the scene: https://istlsfastyet.com/

> increases it’s overhead by almost 100%.

3.8/2.9 kB is a 31% increase.

1.16/0.62 s is an 87% increase.

But okay, let's round up to 100%.

The article is citing a page that counter-argues this:

https://istlsfastyet.com/

> But what about sites like https://doesmysiteneedhttps.com? While this website makes a few valid points, it still relies heavily on “fear tactics” that honestly don’t apply for the vast majority of users. It’s overkill.

Sorry, but not good enough.

1. "a few valid points": you avoid making your visitors liable in oppressive environments (employers, regimes), you avoid very real content injection (commercial or malicious), and you give the visitor a way to know that content wasn't tampered. That's a few valid points. (The rest of https://doesmysiteneedhttps.com are counter-arguments.)

2. "fear tactics": not true. Protecting the integrity of your visitors and your content is nurture, not fear.

3. "don’t apply for the vast majority of users": by making HTTPS standard at practically no cost, you make it work for those for whom it matters. Just because I feel safe on Hacker News doesn't mean that any visitor who goes here will be treated fairly by reading my message.

https://istlsfastyet.com/ (Is TLS fast yet?)

CPUs have specific features to help with encryption now, and HTTP/2 (which pretty much requires TLS) can actually reduce the number of overall TCP connections and may use less resources than clear text HTTP/1.1. Check out https://istlsfastyet.com/