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Are default SSL certs any more secure than HTTP ?


From: martin <martiniscool () gmail com>
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:20:17 +0100

Hi all

We have alot of Juniper firewalls which allow us to configure HTTP and/ or HTTPS for managing the device. I've been encouraging everybody at work to use HTTPS rather than HTTP & SSH rather thantelnet, when configuring management on these devices

However, we don't put a cert of our own in it - we just use the cert that comes with the device out of the box. I don't know Junipers (or other vendors) policy on these certs - but I'm guessing every device they manufacture gets the same cert until that cert expires

So my question is, as the cert is "out there" & widely available to anybody who also has a Juniper device, is using HTTPS any more secure than using HTTP in this case ? If anybody were to snoop the traffic, surely they can easily decrypt it as we're using the "out of the box" cert

I hope I've explained all this OK ? Would really appreciate some feedback

Thanks!
M

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