DANE isn't a solution#

Yesterday, I described how to setup DANE in order to verify HTTPS keys through DNSSEC. I also noted a very important caveat: no one supports it and both Mozilla and Google are unlikely to ever support it. So we can't expect any security gain from implementing DANE in the real world.

Let's be fair: DNSSEC is no panacea. Browser vendors aren't ignoring it out of spite. They are choosing to not implement it for solid technical and social reasons.

Wait, what's the problem, again?#

Let's take a step back and look at why we wanted to use DANE in the first place. The problem is that the HTTPS security model is based on certificate authorities. Your browser has a list of certificate authorities that it trusts and to run a HTTPS site, you ask one (or more) of them to sign your server's public key asserting that your server really is the right one for your domain(s). The catch is that any certificate authority can make assertions about any domain and there's a lot of certificate authorities, many of which are suspected to be under the influence of various governments. This means that you are not just relying on the security of the certificate authority that you choose: you are relying on the security of every single certificate authority in the world. In short, the HTTPS security model is broken.