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If the Client Hello request is somehow intercepted before it gets to the real server and this malicious server replies with it's own certificate (not sure if this is possible, like maybe the malicious server has an actual valid certificate issued by a CA). So from here onwards, the malicious server can simply receive, process and forward the requests from the client to the real server. When the actual server responds, it sends it to the malicious server. The malicious server inspects the message, repackages it with its own shared key with the client and sends it back to the client? Am I missing something?

What I have tried:

Not code, I've tried googling but didn't find exact answer or similar question
Posted
Updated 23-Sep-20 1:40am

1 solution

This would require the attacker to have a valid certificate for the domain they're trying to intercept. There are generally two ways this can happen:

A rogue or compromised CA. This tends to be caught fairly quickly, and that CA will be booted from the "trusted" list.

Governments forcing all users to install a fake CA certificate to allow snooping. This usually requires the users to install the certificates on their own equipment, although it's possible the government in question could force all new equipment to be supplied with the certificate pre-installed. Although many users won't understand the implications, this tends to be highly visible, and gets a lot of negative attention for the government in question. Eg: See the actions by the government of Kazakhstan in July 2019.


There's not much you can do to protect against either of these. But ensuring that your site is always served over TLS is still far preferable to serving it over an unencrypted connection.
 
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