[febusravenga]

Only slightly related ...

> Chrome does not trust user-added Certificate Authorities for QUIC.

Interesting. In linked issue chrome team says:

> We explicitly disallow non-publicly-trusted certificates in QUIC to prevent the deployment of QUIC interception software/hardware, as that would harm the evolvability of the QUIC protocol long-term. Use-cases that rely on non-publicly-trusted certificates can use TLS+TCP instead of QUIC.

I don't follow evolution of those protocols, but i am not sure how disallowing custom certificates has anything with "evolvability" of protocol ...

Anyone knows are those _reasons_?

[filleokus]

If I were to guess, it's to allow Google freedom in experimenting with changes to QUIC, since they control both the client and large server endpoints (Google Search, Youtube etc).

They can easily release a sightly tweaked QUIC version in Chrome and support it on e.g Youtube, and then use metrics from that to inform proposed changes to the "real" standard (or just continue to run the special version for their own stuff).

If they were to allow custom certificates, enterprises using something like ZScaler's ZIA to MITM employee network traffic, would risk to break when they tweak the protocol. If the data stream is completely encrypted and opaque to middleboxes, Google can more or less do whatever they want.

Kinda related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_ossification

[dstroot]

Companies that use something like Zscaler would be highly likely to block QUIC traffic to force it onto TCP.

[josephg]

That’s exactly what Google is hoping will happen. If QUIC is blocked entirely, there’s no risk that small tweaks to the quic protocol will break Google’s websites for any companies using these tools.

[tecleandor]

Well, my company is doing it already. They split VPN traffic depending on the target domain (mostly for benign reasons), and that can't do it with QUIC, so they have to block QUIC traffic.

[account42]

What benign reason could there possibly be that isn't better based on IP addresses rather than domains.

[tecleandor]

When this kind of VPN clients do split traffic based on domains, they do it with some tricks, either via DNS or capturing traffic on the browser, or similar things.

But for doing split VPN with IP addresses they need to create an IP route in the VPN client. If you just have a couple IPs, it's fine, but if you have a couple hundred targets, you're gonna break some guys Windows or Mac machine sending that huge routing table.

Also, there are targets that change IP addresses. For example, AWS Elastic Load Balancers change IP addresses sometimes (if nothing have changed in the last years, haven't deployed ELBs in a while...).

[cpitman]

Middle boxes (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middlebox) are a well known source of protocol stagnation. A protocol with extensibility usually needs the client and server to upgrade, but with middle boxes there are N other devices that potentially need updating as well. Where the user (client) and service provider (server) are motivated to adopt new feature sets, the owners of middle boxes might be far less so. In net, it makes it hard for protocols to evolve.

[sbinder]

Perhaps they're referring to this famous objection of financial institutions to TLS 1.3, motivated by them not wanting to update their MitM software needed for compliance: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tls/CzjJB1g0uFypY8UDdr...

[eptcyka]

TLS1.3 breaks MITM boxes because a client can establish a session key outside of the network with the middle box and continue using it afterwards in the middlebox’s network.

[remus]

> I don't follow evolution of those protocols, but i am not sure how disallowing custom certificates has anything with "evolvability" of protocol ...

One of the reasons for developing HTTP 2 and 3 was because it was so difficult to make changes to HTTP 1.1 because of middleware that relied heavily on implementation details, so it was hard to tweak things without inadvertently breaking people. They're trying to avoid a similar situation with newer versions.

[intelVISA]

QUIC exists to improve ad deliverability, to grant user freedom would counteract that goal.

[jsheard]

How does QUIC improve ad deliverability?

[superkuh]

The entire protocol puts corporate/institutional needs first and foremost to the detriment of human person use cases. HTTP/3 makes all web things require CA TLS and means that if something in the TLS breaks (as it does every couple years with root cert expirations, version obsolecence, acme version obsolecence, etc) then the website is not accessible. Because there's no such thing as HTTP+HTTPS HTTP/3, self-signed HTTPS HTTP/3, or even, as in this case, custom CA TLS HTTP/3. It's designed entirely around corporate/institutional needs and is a terrible protocol for human people. HTTP+HTTPS websites can last decades without admin work. HTTP/3 websites can only last a few years at most.

[mardifoufs]

If it was about institutional needs, surely it would make it easier to mitm for middleboxes? The biggest opposition to QUIC came from big corporations and other institutional players

[chgs]

Different players. Google and other ad companies are bigger than old companies trying to MITM their users.

[persnickety]

This doesn't have much to do with QUIC. If HTTP/3 was based upon another transport protocol, you'd have the exact same problems.

You can use QUIC with custom certs without any trouble.

[superkuh]

QUIC isn't just some transport protocol though: it's weird. These restrictions are based in the QUIC libs, not in UDP (which is the QUIC transport protocol).

And while you can use QUIC with custom certs in a technical sense if you do the compile flags and build your own universe, 99.9999% of the people on Earth with their standard QUIC lib implementations (most use the same two) will be unable to connect to it.

[persnickety]

I don't know what you're talking about, but I just imported a QUIC library and used it with a self-signed certificate. No extra steps required, either on the server or the client side.

Yes, the protocol is weird, compared to TCP. It has many extra features and one restriction, which is mandatory TLS, which I wouldn't even consider skipping anyway. Still nothing to do with ads.

[intelVISA]

> We explicitly disallow non-publicly-trusted certificates in QUIC to prevent the deployment of QUIC interception software/hardware, as that would harm the evolvability of the QUIC protocol

For Chrome at least..!

[josephg]

That has nothing to do with ad deliverability.

[ozim]

There is a case of Kazakhstan installing certs to MITM citizens couple years ago and bunch of cases where bad actors can social engineer people to install certain for.

I think because of KZ case browsers and Chrome especially went for using only their own cert store instead of operating system one.

[jeroenhd]

Browsers responded by blacklisting the Kazakh certificate the same way they blacklist the certificates that came with pre-installed spyware on laptops from shit vendors like Lenovo. You don't need to block all certificates to prevent against a well-known bad certificate.

[toast0]

If your company requires communications to be monitored, the typical enforcement is a custom company CA installed on company equipment. Then they intercept TLS and proxy it.

Those proxies tend to be strict in what they accept, and slow to learn new protocol extensions. If Google wants to use Chrome browsers to try out a new version of QUIC with its servers, proxies make that harder.

[globular-toast]

It can seem confusing but it all makes sense when you realise Chrome is designed to work for Google, not for you. I remember people switching their Grandmas to Chrome 15 years ago when they could've chosen Firefox. Many of us knew this would happen, but convenience and branding is everything, sadly.

[le-mark]

> Chrome is designed to work for Google, not for you.

Maybe more accurately “chrome is designed to work for you in so far as that also works for google”. I share the long standing dismay that so many willingly surrendered their data and attention stream to an ad company.

[fud101]

I don't really think Firefox cares about having users. The one killer feature Chrome has is being able to access all your state by logging into your Chrome account. Firefox refuses to provide this basic service which will allow you to seamlessly use your data on Firefox and then eventually stop using Chrome. I wish Firefox nothing but the worst.

[mdaniel]

I may be feeding the trolls, but not only is there a sync mechanism, at least with Firefox you can self-host[1] such a thing, thereby doubly ensuring the data isn't used for something you disagree with

If you're going to say that Firefox doesn't care about having users, point out its just stunningly stupid memory usage, blatantly stale developer tools (that one hurts me the worst because the Chrome dev-tooling is actually open source, so there's nothing stopping them from actually having Best In Class dev tooling other than no-fucks-given), or the har-de-har-har that comes up periodically of bugs that have been open longer than a lot of developers have been alive

1: https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncstorage-rs#running-v...

[fud101]

Don't care about self hosting. That's not a feature to me, it's a burden. I would rather some cloud provider do that for me, thankfully Google does it for free and the convenience is much appreciated. It's the same reason i'd put my personal code in Github than some hard drive in the basement which may die anytime.

[mdaniel]

Perhaps you interpreted my comment as that one must self-host, versus what I intended which is "you can use theirs, or you can use yours, depending on your paranoia level". I thought to include that distinction because some folks believe that Chrome is merely a data exfiltration and ad delivery vector created by the biggest Ad Tech on the planet and therefore don't trust them to be good stewards of arguably the most sensitive thing a modern user creates: browser history

Of course one can just use Firefox Sync out of the box <https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/sync>; even Mozilla has not yet stooped so low as to require opening a terminal just to use Firefox or its Sync component

[fud101]

Again, I don't care that Firefox wants me to build up my profile on one device. Then transfer that to some other device. I already have my profile. Let me login to my chrome profile and use it. I don't want to buy into your shitty ecosystem even if it gives freedom (that i dont want or care about).

[globular-toast]

I find Firefox's memory usage and dev tooling better than Chrome.

[chgs]

My Firefox installs on my various computers have a shard profile, so what are you on about?