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All extensions disabled due to expiration of intermediate signing cert

(bugzilla.mozilla.org)
1318 points xvector | 4 comments | 04 May 19 01:31 UTC | HN request time: 0.631s | source
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Wowfunhappy ◴[04 May 19 02:12 UTC] No.19823890[source]▶
This is why users need to be in control of their own computers. Why can't I tell my copy of Firefox to ignore the certificate? Why can't I sign my own extensions?

Mistakes happen, it's okay. But users should be empowered to work around them.

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ehsankia ◴[04 May 19 02:19 UTC] No.19823919[source]▶
> Why can't I tell my copy of Firefox to ignore the certificate? Why can't I sign my own extensions?

The issue is that if you leave any sort of lever that reduces security, it will be abused by bad actors. This is why browsers are having ever decreasing ways to bypass security and have full access. It is annoying, but at the end of the day, protecting 99.999% of the users trumps what us power users want.

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1. Wowfunhappy ◴[04 May 19 02:55 UTC] No.19824076[source]▶
Consider the recent news stories about the Boeing 737 Max. Boeing added an automatic system to an airplane, and then didn't give users (the pilots) a way to disable that system. This worked out great while the automatic system is working properly. When the system broke, well, we all know what happened.

If we're going to assume that software is right and the user is wrong 100% of the time, then the software needs to actually be right 100% of the time. Unfortunately, our software isn't that robust, and it never will be.

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2. yazzoo7 ◴[04 May 19 03:11 UTC] No.19824154[source]▶
You mean the 737Max?
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3. Wowfunhappy ◴[04 May 19 03:13 UTC] No.19824163[source]▶
Yes, that was stupid. Edit now, thank you.
4. catherd ◴[04 May 19 04:05 UTC] No.19824376[source]▶
It doesn't have to actually be right 100% of the time. The balance of downsides and upsides of any chosen solution just have to be more palatable than those of whatever alternate implementation you're considering, with a tradeoff between 100% correctness and ability to be implemented before the heat death of the universe being one of the axes to be considered, as well as the level of benefit provided over your whole user base.

In this case, dropping the extra control/ignoring power users is probably saving a lot of non-power users from shooting themselves in the foot in the vast majority of cases. Pilots (should be) 100% power users. The average operator of a browser is somewhere on the opposite end of the spectrum.

Any real system will have things go horribly wrong for some subset of users on a regular basis. It's impossible to be all things for all people for all situations, so you have to choose your battles.