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submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

EU Article 45 requires that browsers trust certificate authorities appointed by governments::The EU is poised to pass a sweeping new regulation, eIDAS 2.0. Buried deep in the text is Article 45, which returns us to the dark ages of 2011, when certificate authorities (CAs) could collaborate with governments to spy on encrypted traffic—and get away with it. Article 45 forbids browsers from...

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[-] sonymegadrive@feddit.uk 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That means cryptographic keys under one government’s control could be used to intercept HTTPS communication

Could someone smarter than me explain how this would be possible? Wouldn’t the browser still be able to enforce privacy between the client and origin? Or is it the case that certificates issued by these CAs could in theory only support weaker cyphers?

Edit: Some really useful explanations. Thank you!

[-] wdx@feddit.de 41 points 1 year ago

There can be an infinite amount of certificates for a single domain.

When you setup a connection to a website you basically get a response back that has been signed with a certificate.

Your Browser / OS has a list of certification authorities that it deems trustworthy.

So when you get the response the browser checks if the certificate was issued by a trusted CA.

Now, if the EU forces browsers to trust their CA they can facilitate a man-in-the-middle attack.

In this instance they will intercept the TLS Handshake and give you back a response that was signed by their certificate. Your Browser deems the certificate valid and sets up a secure tunnel to the EUs Server.

From then on they can forward packets between you and the real website while being able to read everything in cleartext

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this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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