Is SSL Becoming Pointless?

Researchers are poking holes in the chain of trust for SSL certificates which protect sensitive data. According to these hypothesized attacks, governments could compel certificate authorities to give them phony certificates that are signed by the CA, which are then used to perform man in the middle attacks.

They point out that Verisign already makes large sums of money by facilitating the disclosure of US consumers’ private data to US government law enforcement. The researchers are developing a Firefox plugin that checks past certificates and warns of anomalies in the issuing country, but not much can help if government starts spying on the secure connections of its own citizens.