Symantec caught once again improperly issuing illegitimate HTTPS certificates
extremetech.com
extremetech.com
(edited for clarity)
Sometime last year I deleted my CA certificates because I finally realized I'm never going to actually audit all of the certs in there, and I know there are confirmed bad actors among them, so I shouldn't give myself a false sense of security.
My big concern is browsers effectively would have a monopoly over their users (in theory users can switch but in practice most wouldn't), meaning that browsers could dramatically overcharge for their certs. I wouldn't be worried about, say, Mozilla, but some other vendors might not play nice...
I think it would make more sense to create another non-profit variant of Let's Encrypt for EV certs.
Sure, and there's already such a troublingly small vendor's market to begin with (Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, really).
This idea would definitely have problems, but then again so does what we're doing now...
It's a ridiculous system and fwiw, it shouldn't be the security companies (though that's being very polite to Symantec) that grant certificates. It should be notary publics (a business all about assurance of human identity) using a physical appliance.
Or, admit we don't care and ditch the entire system for something based on bailing wire and chewing gum, because that's roughly what we've got now.
As an attorney, and notary public, I cannot begin to explain to you how grossly misguided you are. The requirements to become a notary public are extraordinarily low. The notary public exam should be passable by someone with a tenth grade education. It substantially easier to become a notary public than to get a driver's license.
https://www.nationalnotary.org/new-york#NYRequirements
Not to mention that any attorney admitted to the NY BAR can automatically become a notary without any further testing or requirement. I think it is probably safe to say that a single digit percentage of attorneys in NY state can even articulate what an SSL cert is, much less be trusted to issue them. A very substantial portion of admitted NY attorneys are routinely bested by their own email programs for pete's sake.
This idea is wholly, entirely preposterous.
There is no legal bar whatsoever. No bond, nothing.
> I think it is probably safe to say that a single digit percentage of attorneys in NY state can even articulate what an SSL cert is, much less be trusted to issue them.
Sure, and I don't even expect them to really know the details of a driver's license either. I only expect them to actually spend two minutes checking ID, photocopying the request, etc.
With a physical appliance all they'd need to do would be lock it in a safe.
> This idea is wholly, entirely preposterous.
No, that's the certificate system in the first place. That a CA in China can sign a cert for a company in another country, etc.
All of them today require the CA/B Baseline Requirements plus whatever else takes their fancy. Issuing these certificates violates the Baseline Requirements, because the subscriber did not in fact have control of example.com, and probably not of these testN.com domains either
How would your hypothetical New York attorney with an appliance in a safe validate control over the example.com name ?
This is the Internet, nobody cares that you've shown some balding guy who works above a liquor store a fake driving license in the name Bob Smith - we need to know if you're really ycombinator.com or hsbc.com.hk or a-eon.biz and so the BRs require that Certificate Authorities have an effective way to validate that.
By letting it connect to the internet and check for its challenge number on the target site.
Also, I'm not imagining lawyers, but all notaries. I actually think a 7-11 clerk could handle the job.
> All of them today require the CA/B Baseline Requirements plus whatever else takes their fancy. Issuing these certificates violates the Baseline Requirements, because the subscriber did not in fact have control of example.com, and probably not of these testN.com domains either
Sorry, I missed the story about the bonded guy losing his million-dollar bond and not ever being allowed to have a similar job. They are bonded, right? Because if not all the yada yada is worthless.
> This is the Internet, nobody cares that you've shown some balding guy who works above a liquor store a fake driving license in the name Bob Smith
This is actually a large deterrent. Because of the notary actually checking ID you know you've got a picture of the bad guy. This is the part where we stop the attack from scaling.
> - we need to know if you're really ycombinator.com or hsbc.com.hk or a-eon.biz and so the BRs require that Certificate Authorities have an effective way to validate that.
Some things you say sound like you work in the industry, and some don't. Please describe the complicated cryptographic process you think a CA employee uses to personally verify ownership of a domain...
And those corporate entities (e.g. in this case the multi-billion dollar public company Symantec) are what's on the line when it comes to trust store sanctions. That's why Diginotar no longer exists, even though the Dutch Government tried to rescue it. (Side note: The person who originally started Diginotar was a notary...) and it's why StartCom / WoSign are probably screwed although they're limping along in the Chinese market for now.
I have no idea why you think that seeing a fake ID helps "stop the attack from scaling". You don't have a photo of "the bad guy", you have a photo of somebody who did what they were asked for $20 and a packet of smokes.
And again, validation is not a job for one individual, imaginary million dollar bonds don't make that any less true. Usually domain validation is automated, with the automation overseen by a group of employees, but even where it is not there will be pair reviews or group reviews so that no single person can bypass the system.
Creating the right policies and enforcing them becomes a job for management, for company directors, and where appropriate for the shareholders. A CA must hire auditors to examine these processes. And the audits are reviewed by trust stores. The audits give us confidence that each CA has suitable policies in place to obey the BRs. I would like to see the auditors work directly for the trust stores, but the situation we have today is able to be effective.
For example in the case of WoSign Mozilla told the auditing parent company - EY which used to be named Ernst & Young, a Big Four professional services company - that the branch used (EY Hong Kong) would no longer be accepted as an auditor by Mozilla because based on the available evidence its auditors either had colluded with WoSign / its CEO Richard Wang or were incompetent.
Yes, and does talking to hobos scale? Can you do that online? Wouldn't they rat you out? Don't they lounge in front of shops that would have cameras?
And if you decide to go through all this, why not ask them to receive money-transfers or something more profitable?
> And again, validation is not a job for one individual, imaginary million dollar bonds don't make that any less true.
No, validation isn't performed by the bond - the bond just gives the employee motivation to do their job. And a disincentive for selling out.
> Usually domain validation is automated
> Such an appliance, able to make a determination regardless of its environment, does not and cannot exist.
Yeah. I totally agree with one of your statements.
The CA system with shared authority over one big zone just can't provide a high level of assurance. The games we play to try to keep Chinese CAs from signing certs for our domains (pinning, etc) are ridiculous. People who try that are playing with fire, and all to avoid issues from the broken model.
The issue is that the CA system is fundamentally flawed. It'll never be that good so trying is like gilding a pig. It's good enough for the sort of system I'm describing, but the things you discuss are so over the top for a fundamentally flawed system. Which is why no CA really takes it seriously - they know they're just collecting rent. In the current system we'll either kill the CAs one after another as someone tricks them into creating certs they shouldn't, or we'll end up with a collection of losers we can't kill because we know the next ones would be just as incompetent. Much like the banks.
What we need to do is adjust our expectations to what we can actually deliver, and are willing to pay for. All we need is a small roadblock you can't accomplish online and certificate transparency to make sure you see everything the system signs.
We can however ban them from issuing any new certs. It wouldn't be the first time this has been done.
Also, and most critically, it's musical chairs between cloud and security companies. If Symantec came to Google to complain it's likely they'd go straight to VPs who used to work with them and get special treatment.
Hence the call to use notaries. Let's avoid the whole buddy network.
so, let's not be hasty. this isn't a security problem. it's just a "possible situation".
hell, we've all been in situations before. there's nothing inherently wrong with a situation, even if it took place in a location named "test, Korea". i mean, hey, we've all taken tests. some of us have even been in test situations. it's not a problem.
you can just go now. this is not the situation you're looking for.
https://crt.sh/?id=63552608 with commonName: jotestintermediate.bbtest.net
So I wonder what the correct way to issue illegitimate HTTPS certificates is?