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Why I stopped using StartSSL (Hint: it involves a Chinese company)

pierrekim.github.io

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Re: Why I stopped using StartSSL (Hint: it involves a Chinese company)

#41

Post by cm2187 »

happywolf wrote: post #37
steve371 wrote: post #15

Chinese company is not a red flag. but Qihoo is. The company has known bad reputation. a. they labeled their own browser as a Microsoft security update, which triggered MS investigation b. they cheated on the anti-virus lab testing and got banned. ....etc.

Would like to add Baidu isn't better, too. Example, try search proprietary software, say 'Autocad', first few results are always pirate sites, while google will show the Autodesk site and the wikipedia post. Recently Baidu also under the spotlight for monetizing illness-related forums[1]. The issue is some patients accused the Internet giant selling their private info to _unqualified_ private hospitals. These hospita…

I imagine google is showing a global popularity vs popularity in China. A good search engine shows first the results that most people are really looking for...

Re: Why I stopped using StartSSL (Hint: it involves a Chinese company)

#42

Post by cm2187 »

bjacobel wrote: post #3

There's really not much reason to use StartSSL now that Let's Encrypt, AWS Certificate Manager and others offer free certs with vastly better support, tooling and interfaces.

I will wait for IIS integration before using let's encrypt. Everything I have seen so far doesn't suggest simplicity.

Re: Why I stopped using StartSSL (Hint: it involves a Chinese company)

#44

Post by sandGorgon »

kccqzy wrote: post #20
sandGorgon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you explain this ? I'm trying to bake letsencrypt certificates in my docker images and I am trying to figure out a way around the race condition (nginx needs a certificate to run certificate needs nginx to run).

You can obtain a certificate by running let's encrypt's docker image, which seems to contain a python web server just to do the validation.

cannot run a docker inside a docker. the problem is not running a webserver, the problem is the race condition which needs to be solved when docker starts up.

Re: Why I stopped using StartSSL (Hint: it involves a Chinese company)

#46

Post by Laforet »

cm2187 wrote: post #42
bjacobel wrote: post #3

There's really not much reason to use StartSSL now that Let's Encrypt, AWS Certificate Manager and others offer free certs with vastly better support, tooling and interfaces.

I will wait for IIS integration before using let's encrypt. Everything I have seen so far doesn't suggest simplicity.

https://github.com/Lone-Coder/letsencrypt-win-simple/wiki

Not perfect but seems to work fine.

Re: Why I stopped using StartSSL (Hint: it involves a Chinese company)

#47

Post by derFunk »

ascorbic wrote: post #36
bjacobel wrote: post #3

There's really not much reason to use StartSSL now that Let's Encrypt, AWS Certificate Manager and others offer free certs with vastly better support, tooling and interfaces.

StartSSL has some of the worst support I've ever encountered. Normally bad support means clueless or non-responsive. However StartSSL support is often actively hostile, treating customers as idiots or worse. I should point out that this isn't always the case, and I have used them in the past without trouble, but the times when it is bad are bad enough to write them off. Their site also looks like it was made in 1998,…

I agree that their style in responding to questions is really bad (one liners etc). Yet I'm having the experience that they responded quickly and with helpful information if you had a question.

I'm now just curious what happens to my data if they're sold to China. I mean, the amount of personal data they are asking for when acquiring a certificate is not really small.

Re: Why I stopped using StartSSL (Hint: it involves a Chinese company)

#48

Post by 0x0 »

EwanToo wrote: post #34
0x0 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of support for wildcard certificates is still an issue for Let's Encrypt. Rate limiting and SNI are two issues that means a wildcard certificate is still highly desirable.

I'm struggling to think of a browser that supports SHA-2 TLS encryption, and doesn't support SNI, which one am I missing?

Windows XP and Android 2.x comes to mind. Non-HTTP protocols (IMAP, SMTP, XMPP, SIP etc) may also struggle with SNI.

But the biggest problem here is wildcarded subdomains, since LE doesn't let you get more than 5 certificates per domain.

Re: Why I stopped using StartSSL (Hint: it involves a Chinese company)

#49

Post by Laforet »

dujiulun2006 wrote: post #25
steve371 wrote: post #15

Chinese company is not a red flag. but Qihoo is. The company has known bad reputation. a. they labeled their own browser as a Microsoft security update, which triggered MS investigation b. they cheated on the anti-virus lab testing and got banned. ....etc.

For Chinese people working in IT industry, Qihoo is an awful company for the reasons mentioned above, but also for allegedly assisting government Internet censorship. Now let's make their awful name worldwide. ;)

Like it or not, they do have a crack team of engineers. 90%+ of the Windows kernel hackers in China have worked, or still is with Qihoo.

Re: Why I stopped using StartSSL (Hint: it involves a Chinese company)

#50

Post by derFunk »

Reading this I'm more worried about the personal data StartSSL has about me. I never felt good giving away so much personal data to CAs when acquiring certificates to identify myself. Do we know how StartSSL handles this? Do the Chinese now have a copy of my passport, electricity bill et cetera? (well, I've been to China already, so the state already got my passport, but not necessarily a "private" company).
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