CDR: Re: Public Key Infrastructure: An Artifact...

[Bram Cohen]

On Sun, 19 Nov 2000 obfuscation at beta.freedom.net wrote:

> > When the user goes to www.amazon.com, they get a plaintext http redirect
> > to amazon.hackeddomain.com, which does check.
> 
> Still confused...
> 
> The original connection to www.amazon.com is an SSL connection, right?
> We are following an https: URL?  (Otherwise, SSL would not even come
> into the picture.)

No, the attacker interferes with the very first connect to www.amazon.com,
probably at the DNS level, and that's almost always done plaintext.

-Bram Cohen