Here is a modest suggestion from the devil's advocate: web browsersshould forbid self-signed SSL certificate entirely, with no 'no,really, let me through' button, option, or extended dialog . They should do this because in practice and ingeneral there is no way to make self-signed SSL certificates at allsecure.

Self-signed certificates are insecure in general unless you reallytruly know what you are doing. Most users do not know what they aredoing in this sense, and for

This realization struck me after writing yesterday's entry :

One consequence of the security paranoia way of thinking (or if youwant to use the polite term, of the mathematically correct security way of thinking) is that false negatives areconsidered unacceptable. Either they are flaws in the implementationor they are flaws in the theory underlying the security system, and ineither case they must be eliminated; it is incorrect to allow one toremain.

(By false negatives here I mean situations where the security systemfails to detect