Quote:
Originally Posted by LiquidAcid
Anyway, the aforementioned fake cert issue to allow man-in-the-middle attacks can also happen here. You need to trust them that they really keep their root CA offline ( reference) and secure. |
There is a huge difference between simply offering a secure connection (which is what's Let's Encrypt makes easy to make use of) and pretending to be someone else (full TLS certificates are used to not only enable secure connections but also identify the server as the correct endpoint for an verified company or individual, that's something Let's Encrypt doesn't offer and is where man in the middle attacks really hurt).
I agree the CA system is rotten. The only conclusion can be that trustworthy servers take the matter in their own hands and need to have certificate and public key pinning implemented for man in the middle attacks to be impossible. Once that's done (and all browsers support HPKP, booh Microsoft and Apple...) the choice of CA doesn't really matter anymore.
Anyway going back to the encrypted vs. plain text connection debate, the former is always better even if it may be not actually perfectly secured (which is completely in the hands of the server maintainers nowadays), the latter always allows everybody to do any and all ways of abuse on the connection and you won't ever notice.