2008-10-20 13:00:04
Ah, cryptographic security: a boon to those who understand the algorithms, but all too often a lost cause to those who don't. The secure HTTPS protocol for Web surfing is widely accepted, but has one fatal flaw: users ignore certificate error warnings. A Firefox extension called Perspectives aims to close that security hole. Firefox pops up a security warning whenever it encounters an SSL certificate that doesn't match the domain name of the site on which it is found, or is self-signed. Both situations are commonplace; gmail.com, for example, uses a certificate issued for mail.google.com, and many non-commercial Web sites use self-signed certificates because they don't want to pay yearly fees to a certificate authority such as VeriSign. 

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