SSL Was a Mistake SSL Was a Mistake

SSL Was a Mistake

In 1994, Netscape introduced SSL to encrypt web traffic. It was a noble goal, but the implementation was flawed from the start. SSL (and its successor TLS) created a false sense of security while introducing complexity, performance overhead, and centralization risks.

Consider this: over 90% of web traffic is now encrypted, yet phishing and malware attacks are at an all-time high. Encryption didn't solve security - it just moved the battlefield. Meanwhile, the certificate authority system has become a bloated, expensive mess. In 2022 alone, Let's Encrypt issued over 2.5 billion certificates, creating a massive attack surface.

The real mistake was tying encryption to identity verification. We could have had encryption without the CA system. But now we're stuck with a brittle, centralized infrastructure that's one CA compromise away from catastrophe.