It is allowed by all the root programs.
The practices (both technological and procedural) we put around our program are some of the best in the industry, we take this responsibility very seriously.
More over we very rarely do it and instead work with customers to utilize our managed PKI offerings where we operate the infrastructure on behalf of the customer.
Really? Care to name names?
If this is so common, allowed, and totally above-board, why is the industry being so secretive about it?
Why won't the CA industry disclose even the number of sub-CA (constrained critically, noncritically, or not at all) private keys in possession of 3rd parties (HSMs or no)?
As for disclosing all CAs have agreed to disclose -- no secret here at all.
And clearly from this thread I am being very open :)
This is not directed specifically at you @rmhrisk, but it's really disappointing how everyone involved in PKI seems to have a systematic habit of pretending like clearly identified potential risks and vulnerabilities are equivalent to impossible until (and sometimes even after) they're actually caught being used in an actual exploit.
With that said GlobalSign has committed to implementing CT and we hope all other CAs agree to do the same as Adam points out earlier in this thread its the way to bring the desired transperancy.
That said it alone inst enough either, to start we also need TACK (and/or HSTS pinning), CAA, robust revocation checking and Name Constraints.
And while conversations like this are uncomfortable (certainly for me being on the receiving end) I think they help too.
I could get on board with that.
I also believe that certificate transparency by itself is insufficient and the other items I mentioned are also needed.