Lukewarm take:

When I see general* "security advice" that mentions "do not use public WiFi" or "use a VPN", I am immediately suspicious about all other advice offered.

Yes, a decade ago that was a consideration, because most sites were not using HTTPS. Credentials were flying cleartext on the wire.

Today, almost all sites use HTTPS. Doesn't mean the risk is zero, but it's way lower.

*) "general" meaning "without a very specific threat model in mind", meant for general public, etc.

#InfoSec

Actually, downgraded that take to "lukewarm", it should really not be controversial at all these days. It's been a hot minute since LetsEncrypt changed the HTTPS landscape!

What is beyond me is that such "security advice" still gets pushed. 

Also, shout-out to @letsencrypt for dramatically changing the security landscape of the Web for the better over the years.

Rarely is there an example of a project so effective and so directly improving everyone's lives, while at the same time keeping the original engineering mindset and just Doing Stuff Right™ humbly in the background.

Next November it will have been exactly a decade since LE started. We all owe them a huge 10th birthday party.

#InfoSec

@rysiek @letsencrypt
What they got very right is using the appropriate measures for the problem robustly. for >90% of cases knowing "is this host the host that it is claiming it is" is sufficient. everything else follows with elegant inevitability as implemented by LE in a lean, automatable way. That seems to be not a small feat to pull off these days - well, or even 10 years ago. The feature-creep and mismatch of solution and problem is very real for many other cases in the security landscape.
@rysiek @letsencrypt I mean… I‘m very wary of „works for most“ solutions but this is the exception that improves many people’s lives and lowers the bar of implementing previously tedious measures without any negative impact on the rest.