Google, Mozilla and Apple use this strange thing to block the monitoring of their own citizens by Kazakhstan / Boing Boing

Google and Mozilla are making changes to their respective web browsers to try to thwart the corrupt government's efforts to launch a surveillance operation against its own citizens.

Google (Chrome), Mozilla (Firefox) and now Apple (Safari) all block a root certificate of the government of Kazakhstan in their browsers, which could be used to intercept encrypted traffic destined for Facebook, Gmail, Twitter or any other means. users of news or communication applications could use it.

Google and Mozilla were the first to act. Later in the day, an Apple spokesman started telling reporters that Safari was also blocking the root certificate.

"We have taken steps to ensure that the certificate is not approved by Safari and our users are protected from this problem," Apple's anonymous spokesman said.

Better late than never, but US-based technology companies are too late to protect all Kazakh users. The government of Kazakhstan launched the root certificate last month and since then it has been able to monitor the encrypted Internet activity of all the users who had it installed.

From Amrita Khalid of Engadget:

The nation has forced ISPs to cooperate by requiring all customers to install the certificate in order to access the Internet.

It turns out that the root certificate was a Trojan horse. According to a study published by Censored Planet of the University of Michigan, the Kazakh government was able to launch a "Man-in-the-middle" or MitM attack against HTTPS connections on a list of 37 domains, including Facebook. , Twitter, Google and more. . Normally, HTTPS Web sites are encrypted so that ISPs or governments can not access them. In the case of Kazakhstan, the MitM attack broke the encryption of these sites, allowing the government to freely spy on private Internet activities.

The Chrome and Firefox browsers in Kazakhstan will ban the illicit certificate even before users can download it. Mozilla will block Kazakhstan's root certificate with OneCRL, used by Firefox since 2015 to revoke certificates. Previously, users who accessed the Internet in Kazakhstan received a message on their smartphone or computer asking them to install the root certificate.

Now, when Firefox detects the certificate in Kazakhstan, it blocks the connection and displays an error message. "Research shows that many users click on errors without understanding what they mean, which leaves them no better off than if there were no warnings. users in Kazakhstan have no choice but to install the certificate and because this attack undermines the integrity of a critical network security mechanism, "said Marshall Erwin, Principal Director, Trust & Safety of Mozilla, in a email addressed to Engadget.

More: Google and Mozilla will block Web monitoring in Kazakhstan [image: shutterstock]

Updated with Apple's statement https://t.co/F6EaPcN5QI

– Joseph Cox (@josephfcox) August 21, 2019

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