Avast’s man in the middle
This reports that Avast, an antivirus program, inserts itself as a man-in-the-middle on all SSL connections on computers it's installed on. This actually makes sense; if it wants to scan for malware in web pages and file downloads coming from https sites, it has to either do this or mess with the internals of web browsers, and MitM is easier and less likely to cause technical problems.<p>The problem is, making a secure SSL endpoint is really hard; if you aren't very very careful in how you distinguish good from bad SSL certificates, then users are vulnerable to having their connections tampered with by things like untrusted Wifi routers. Web browsers put a lot of work into distinguishing good and bad SSL certificates, and Avast's MitM interferes with this working correctly. In particular, this article reports that Avast will accept revoked SSL certificates, which is a problem.<p>What ought to happen here, is that Avast (and other AV vendors) should be coordinating with Chrome (and other browser makers) to provide an API for antivirus software to get access and scan, in a way that doesn't interfere with the normal SSL authentication machinery. I suspect that browser vendors are hesitant because an API created for that purpose would likely also get hijacked and used by malware and adware.