Live data from Hacker News

Chinese CA WoSign faces revocation after possibly issuing fake certificates

percya.com

31–40 of 116 posts

Re: Chinese CA WoSign faces revocation after possibly issuing fake certificates

#31
post #19
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wosign is not in the list of default CAs on the Mac, according to Keychain, so if you are using Chrome on a Mac, since Chrome only uses the system's root certs, you should be safe as long as you don't go add that root cert into Keychain. Wosign is in Firefox however, so Mozilla needs to do something about this.

They're cross-signed by StartCom, which is trusted by MacOS.

True, is there anything a SSL cert manager can do short of a blanket ban of StartCom certs?

Re: Chinese CA WoSign faces revocation after possibly issuing fake certificates

#32
Too big to fail my ass. There's no such thing when it comes to security. If anything, that's more reason to cut them loose.

If a CA pulls shit like this they need to be revoked immediately and let the wrath of 1000s of businesses that are impacted by cert warnings rain down upon them. That will 1) Solve the security problem immediately and 2) Publicize what it means to get a cert from a crap CA that doesn't care about security.

Sure it will suck for the "little guy" who didn't know but, if you don't do this, he'll never know and never learn.

Re: Chinese CA WoSign faces revocation after possibly issuing fake certificates

#33
post #16
post #15

I just went to delete these roots from my Windows system but it's not listed. It was in Firefox's list but not in Window's. Anyone know why?

They're cross-signed by startcom.

Given StartCom's bad behavior, you're probably better off marking them untrusted too.

Re: Chinese CA WoSign faces revocation after possibly issuing fake certificates

#34
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly the internet equivalent of too big to fail banks. And like for banks it is unacceptable. The internet needs its Lehman moment to become resilient again. We should let a Comodo fail.

So what is the solution to big banks and big CAs? We are just in the process of collectively creating the biggest CA the world ha sver seen.

The certificate system - like the federal reserve - doesn't just fail us in these specifics, but is generally incompatible with the underlying philosophies of distributed technology.

Re: Chinese CA WoSign faces revocation after possibly issuing fake certificates

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would certainly be better than nothing, yes. But prior to March 2015, CAs could issue certs valid for up to 5 years. So even if browsers stopped accepting WoSign certs with an issuance date after today, WoSign could still issue certs "issued March 2015 valid until to March 2020" and browsers would accept them.

If they start putting fake dates on the certs then the nuclear option is the only option. They are in the business of selling trust and they're outright lying on their only product? That's untenable.

See above, they've already been caught doing that.

Re: Chinese CA WoSign faces revocation after possibly issuing fake certificates

#37

Is there an easy way for me to revoke trust from all Chinese CAs? Anyone in China is ultimately subject to being forced to do the dirty work of the Chinese Communist Party. Why are browser and OS vendors even trusting them in the first place?

I untrusted all Chinese-sounding CAs from "System Roots" under "Keychain Access" in OSX as soon as I got my laptop. That's what Chrome and Safari verify against.

Re: Chinese CA WoSign faces revocation after possibly issuing fake certificates

#38
post #32

Too big to fail my ass. There's no such thing when it comes to security. If anything, that's more reason to cut them loose. If a CA pulls shit like this they need to be revoked immediately and let the wrath of 1000s of businesses that are impacted by cert warnings rain down upon them. That will 1) Solve the security problem immediately and 2) Publicize what it means to get a cert from a crap CA that doesn't care abou…

[deleted]

Re: Chinese CA WoSign faces revocation after possibly issuing fake certificates

#39
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly the internet equivalent of too big to fail banks. And like for banks it is unacceptable. The internet needs its Lehman moment to become resilient again. We should let a Comodo fail.

So what is the solution to big banks and big CAs? We are just in the process of collectively creating the biggest CA the world ha sver seen.

I think we should just pull the rug out. Site operators need to be more aware of which CAs they're using, and need to feel some of the pain from the failure if they're going to shop for CAs based on anything except price.

The behavior of consumers in the certificate marketplace is part of the systemic problem: nobody cares very much about their CA, as long as it causes the little padlock to display correctly (and, more importantly, for warnings to not display) in users' browsers. That's it; beyond that it's a race to the bottom on price.

If a few CAs went down in flames and in doing so created a nasty firedrill for all their customers (which, on the scale of firedrills, getting new certs issued really shouldn't be that big of a deal, compared to a zero-day vulnerability in some piece of the server stack, which happens fairly regularly), suddenly there might be an interest in acquiring certificates from somewhere other than the cheapest-possible source.

Re: Chinese CA WoSign faces revocation after possibly issuing fake certificates

#40
post #16
post #15

I just went to delete these roots from my Windows system but it's not listed. It was in Firefox's list but not in Window's. Anyone know why?

They're cross-signed by startcom.

Windows actually trusts 5 WoSign roots by default, regardless of the StartCom cross-signing.

Friendly names: WoSign - WoSign 1999 - WoSign ECC - WoSign G2 - WoSign China

Post reply on HN