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WoSign and StartCom: Mozilla’s proposed conclusion

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Re: WoSign and StartCom: Mozilla’s proposed conclusion

#91

Post by dragonwriter »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #88

I'm not going to defend WoSign/StartCom's shady tactics, but the way the deprecation of SHA1 was performed puts people in a pretty shitty position. You can't support Windows XP users who use IE anymore with HTTPs. In the western world, that number is very small. It's around 1% still using XP and most of those people are probably not using IE anymore. In china though, that number is still >5%, and I got that number pe…

> You can't support Windows XP users who use IE anymore with HTTPs.

Supporting Windows XP IE users' delusions of security is, arguably, not a desirable thing.

Re: WoSign and StartCom: Mozilla’s proposed conclusion

#92

Post by tarancato »

rudolf0 wrote: post #69
tarancato wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like the EFF, but I guess I will have to use Let's Encrypt if there's no other option.

If I might ask, why don't you like them?

They are a political organisation and their ideas conflict with mine. I don't keep a strong boycott on them, but I don't want to support their products, that's all.

Re: WoSign and StartCom: Mozilla’s proposed conclusion

#93

Post by xnyhps »

tptacek wrote: post #42
bcg1 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only is it a year without revenue... I imagine this will devastate their revenues in future years as existing customers up for renewal during that time will likely permanently migrate to another CA.

It looks like Mozilla and Google have created a set of circumstances where the rational next step would be to wind down WoSign/Startcom and just start a new company.

Or buy yet another CA and continue under their name?

Re: WoSign and StartCom: Mozilla’s proposed conclusion

#94

Post by agwa »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #90
jvehent wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't support Windows XP users who use IE anymore with HTTPs. Sure you can. Just ask a CA that has an old root trusted by XP but no longer trusted by modern browsers, and they'll issue a SHA-1 cert for you without risking to get kicked out of the truststores.

And what about all the modern browsers you also need to support?

You serve them a SHA-2 certificate. (In TLSv1.2 the client's supported hash algorithms are included in the handshake. Clients that don't support TLSv1.2 are probably fine with SHA-1. You can also use heuristics based on the ciphersuite to determine whether a client should get a SHA-1 certificate or not.)

Re: WoSign and StartCom: Mozilla’s proposed conclusion

#95

Post by mtgx »

tux3 wrote: post #13

>We also hope the public can see that when there are allegations of CA wrongdoing, Mozilla is committed to a fair, transparent and thorough investigation of the facts of each case. I'm very happy to see the way Mozilla handled this incident, both with the process and the conclusion. I have a moderate trust in the CA ecosystem as a whole, but I'm glad to see that overwhelming incompetence, if not outright maliciousnes…

My hope would be that since this method of punishing seems to be liked by most and even feels "generous" to some, the browser vendors would more aggressively start handing out "1 year suspensions" for more and more CAs that are caught doing anything even remotely like this.

Then after a year or two, and after the CAs have learned that they need to take this stuff seriously, and yet some still get caught doing it, the browser vendors should increase the level of punishment, because those getting caught then wouldn't have much of an excuse anymore.

Re: WoSign and StartCom: Mozilla’s proposed conclusion

#96

Post by xnyhps »

dspillett wrote: post #20
xnyhps wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google detecting further abuse of notBefore via Certificate Transparency You don't need to rely on Google. All certs issued by WoSign since January 1st, 2015 should be on WoSign's own Certificate Transparency log from which you can download them. StartCom is logging all new certs too, but I don't know for sure if they pushed all older ones too. If you ever encounter a cert that isn't on the list, that's definitive…

> You don't need to rely on Google ... should be on WoSign's own Certificate Transparency log which you can download Given that the behaviours being documented include falsifying data (backdating certificates to get around SHA1 retirement), I would prefer to at least use information from Google (or another third party) for the purpose of verification, rather than just relying on information sourced from WoSign/StartC…

They can't backdate their Certificate Transparency log without leaving cryptographic evidence behind. That's how CT is designed to work.

Of course, simply being in the log doesn't imply the cert was issued correctly, but the logs have been posted for a couple of months now and have received a lot of scrutiny during Mozilla's investigation. But the same is true for Google's log, presence in that log is also no guarantee that it was issued correctly.

Re: WoSign and StartCom: Mozilla’s proposed conclusion

#97

Post by jrockway »

tomjen3 wrote: post #65
pquerna wrote: post #39

While most of the doc focused on StartCom/WoSign, I thought this bit at the end was interesting: > no longer accept audits carried out by Ernst & Young (Hong Kong). To reject audits from E&Y.... It makes me wonder about the transparency and trust we put in the auditors as being a key part of CA validation process.

Isn't that only E&Y Hong Kong, though? Really at this point I don't know why anybody in China, or any country known for its corruption, should be accepted as auditors.

You're painting 1 billion people with a rather broad brush.

Re: WoSign and StartCom: Mozilla’s proposed conclusion

#98

Post by pfg »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #90
jvehent wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't support Windows XP users who use IE anymore with HTTPs. Sure you can. Just ask a CA that has an old root trusted by XP but no longer trusted by modern browsers, and they'll issue a SHA-1 cert for you without risking to get kicked out of the truststores.

And what about all the modern browsers you also need to support?

It's possible to determine whether a client supports certificates using SHA-2 by analyzing the ClientHello and use that to switch between a SHA-1 and SHA-2 certificate. CloudFlare[1] and some of the bigger sites like Facebook have done this.

[1]: https://blog.cloudflare.com/sha-1-deprecation-no-browser-lef...

Re: WoSign and StartCom: Mozilla’s proposed conclusion

#99

Post by [deleted] »

justinclift wrote: post #82
TorKlingberg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we are very fortunate to have Let's Encrypt now.

One problem - at least for the project I'm working on - is that Lets Encrypt isn't a replacement for all of StartCom. We use a StartCom "MS Authenticode" certificate to sign our releases, so Windows users don't get a warning message from the various anti-malware scanners (and similar). At first glance it sounds like Mozilla not accepting new StartCom cert's at some point won't affect that. It may snowball, but that's…

[deleted]
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