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Why is nobody using SSL client certificates?

pilif.github.io

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Re: Why is nobody using SSL client certificates?

#81

Post by count »

Spearchucker wrote: post #62
count wrote: post #11

The whole DOD is using it, but they're on crypto smart cards, so many folks don't realize that's what they're doing. Email, single sign on, web site auth, etc. Works great!

It's easy enough to use on a smart card, but try setting that up. I'm trivialising now, but you're looking at... - Card manufacture - Key handling - Enrolment - Card lifecycle - Certificate lifecycle - Identity synchronisation You could buy a stack of white-labelled cards, of it you're the DoD you'd roll your own. That's shopping for silicon wafers, contact plate assemblies, mag stripes, holograms, RFID blanks, plast…

You're right, it's a ridiculously large organizational overhead. Not to mention the CA's become single-point-of-compromise for the whole PKI. Even after 10 years or so of the CAC, the DoD process is still not pain-free. They've finally moved to OCSP instead of CRLs, which helps (the CRL is so large now that it will bluescreen Windows on import to the registry, haha) some of the pain.

Even the DoD doesn't roll it's own cards and foundry stuff: they're standard Gemalto (and a few other provider) cards. You can order blanks yourself, I believe.

It's also a black art - VERY very few people seem to know how to 'boostrap' the system (enable PKI for a domain or web server, get new certs issued, etc.) even within the over-archign framework.

That said,my point still stands: millions of people (literally) use PKI for client SSL certs daily.

Re: Why is nobody using SSL client certificates?

#82

Post by count »

akama wrote: post #20
count wrote: post #11

The whole DOD is using it, but they're on crypto smart cards, so many folks don't realize that's what they're doing. Email, single sign on, web site auth, etc. Works great!

I would love to hear more about this. I've been looking for a good sso solution that uses crypto cards.

ADFS and UAG - the crypto card is tied to an account in AD, AD is configured to trust certs signed by a given CA, and the UAG software then uses that authenticated user to provide SSO.

Re: Why is nobody using SSL client certificates?

#83

Post by nstielau »

We are using client-side SSL certificates extensively for API as well as browser-based single-sign-on for 20+ employees on a smattering of Mac/Linux/iPhone/Android devices. Definitely some ramp-up and wonkiness, but it's working well.

Also worth noting that infrastructure components like Cassandra [1] and RabbitMQ [2] leverage PKI as well.

Checkout our Jenkins client-side SSL cert auth plugin: https://github.com/pantheon-systems/certificate-authenticati...

[1] http://www.datastax.com/documentation/cassandra/1.2/index.ht... [2] http://www.rabbitmq.com/ssl.html

Re: Why is nobody using SSL client certificates?

#84

Post by jlgaddis »

pilif wrote: post #46

I'm the author of this post which I have written in 2008. Since then my views have changed a bit: for one, the added security is debatable as the client cert is easily accessible to malware and thus could easily be stolen. The other thing is that renegotiation is somewhat broken since that related security flaw in 2010ish, so you can't have parts of a site accessible without client certs and other parts requiring a c…

The U.S. government is a very large user of PKI.

One is issued an identification card which is really a smart card ("common access card"[0]) with certificates on it and that is used for authentication.

PKI works but "it's too {hard|much trouble}" is a frequent excuse.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Access_Card

Re: Why is nobody using SSL client certificates?

#85

Post by joshuaellinger »

The reason I would like a client certificate solution that worked (even if it was a malware target) is that I could reject all web traffic to my applications if they came in without a cert. It would decrease my public footprint dramatically.

I don't mind approving a user once per device. We've got to set them up anyway.

Re: Why is nobody using SSL client certificates?

#86

Post by makmanalp »

tptacek wrote: post #16

Try having two client certificates and seeing the browser UX for selecting which one to present to which site. You'll see why they aren't used. Client certificates should be much more popular in backend applications, where they're straightforward to use, flexible, and fairly trustworthy. But they're not a good end-user technology.

Relevant classic: http://www.gaudior.net/alma/johnny.pdf

Re: Why is nobody using SSL client certificates?

#87

Post by spc476 »

area51org wrote: post #37
lmm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have specific criticisms? In cryptography, a system that has withstood scrutiny for that long is a rare and exceedingly valuable thing. By all means use it as the ugly foundations that you hide beneath the beautiful edifice on top, but throwing it away would be madness.

You're right, I'm being vague. I'm looking for two things, really: 1- simpler implementation — one that is easier for users to understand, and includes client certs by default 2- one with a re-engineered cryptographic implementation, one less likely to have the kind of numerous security flaws that have been uncovered in SSL/TLS over the years SSL was originally meant to serve two purposes: 1- encrypt communication 2-…

I've been playing around with DJB's NaCl (http://nacl.cr.yp.to/) and have found it to be a very easy API to use (if a bit quirky to install). Using this, I've come to the conclusion that the actual cryptography is trivial compared to key management ("trivial" in the meaning "it's done and proven, it should be easy to use," not in the "anybody can write their own encryption system").

Re: Why is nobody using SSL client certificates?

#88

Post by peterwwillis »

tomgirl1 wrote: post #28
mtrimpe wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're as secure as your ability to keep the private keys private, just like with server certs. As far as MITM and PFS goes; that's handled just the same as regular SSL. Using a client cert doesn't affect that at all.

Which is not secure at all. you can MITM a typical SSL connection in so many ways SSL might as well not exist. No real cert validation, forged certs, proxy replays. SSL is a joke.

You can't MITM an SSL session with validly CA-signed certs unless you've pwnd the CA, web server or end user's machine. And I don't know what you're going on about with regarding "no real cert validation". If it's valid, it will be validated. There's nothing wrong with it when it's done right.

Re: Why is nobody using SSL client certificates?

#89

Post by jlgaddis »

gcb0 wrote: post #73
pilif wrote: post #46

I'm the author of this post which I have written in 2008. Since then my views have changed a bit: for one, the added security is debatable as the client cert is easily accessible to malware and thus could easily be stolen. The other thing is that renegotiation is somewhat broken since that related security flaw in 2010ish, so you can't have parts of a site accessible without client certs and other parts requiring a c…

the malware point is moot. malware can steals passwords saved, which are optionally saved encrypted. the cert at least in the one browser i checked is always encrypted. and even then, if you have malware in your box, any and all security measures are worthless at this point. decent Renegotiation and mobile client support will come if people using that on the desktop request the feature. it's like that for everything…

Certificates can also be marked as non-exportable.

Re: Why is nobody using SSL client certificates?

#90

Post by tptacek »

dllthomas wrote: post #80
tptacek wrote: post #16

Try having two client certificates and seeing the browser UX for selecting which one to present to which site. You'll see why they aren't used. Client certificates should be much more popular in backend applications, where they're straightforward to use, flexible, and fairly trustworthy. But they're not a good end-user technology.

To your mind, is this more a matter of the particular UI that currently exists, or are the UX issues more fundamental to the technology?

You can imagine a UX that would abstract certificates and their generation into a notion of accounts or personas, but the binding of those accounts to actual websites would be tricky and might involve new protocol, which is something you don't want to be doing with TLS certificates.
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