Hmm…so the local application must install a rootkey so that it can read the encrypted content! Sounds bad right? Well, how else can you check the content for anything malicious in it, unless you decrypt it? Of course you can’t. That means as long as the criminals can have an encrypted channel to your computer they can push down all the malware they want and because you can’t decrypt the content you won’t know. This is also a problem for content filtering products. How can your content filtering product classify a website if its encrypted? Of course it can’t! That’s another reason why it must be decrypted. And that is why these local https proxies are used so that the security product can have access to content to check for malicious activity.
Do I like it? No. Is there any other way of doing it? We are in constant search to improve our user experience and yes there are some other ways but they are yet to be proven as a good working alternative.
So the options are don’t decrypt, allow criminals infect our users….or decrypt and protect the users……
Ok then, who might be using this method in their products?