Rated 5 out of 5 stars

by redbu11 on Aug. 27, 2008 · permalink

A great tool to verify self-signed certificates, possibly a viable alternative to expensive SSL certificates from Verisign and Thawte.

Virtually all web servers and web browsers support strong HTTPS encryption nowadays, but use of HTTPS is limited to those websites able to pay $250+ per year for a certificate from Verisign or Thawte.

Self signed certificates are free but of limited use because they are (1) open to man-in-the middle attacks, and (2) trigger lots of scary warnings in the browser.

Perspectives provides an innovative and elegant way to verify any self-signed SSL certificate by using so-called "notary" servers. In a nutshell, it says "you can trust this self-signed cert because several notary servers in different parts of the Internet received the same certificate, and this certificate didn't change since the last 30 days".

A man-in-the-middle would have to hijack *all* connections to the website, for several days, which is virtually impossible.

NB: Please download the extension from the developers website. The version on mozilla.org isn't up to date yet.