Digicert Withdraws from the CA Security Council • Hacker News Board

Re: Digicert Withdraws from the CA Security Council

#41

Post by markonen » Mon, Jul 02, 2018, 5:51 AM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #4

geofft wrote: post #3

Note that this is not the CA/Browser Forum, the usual industry association you hear about. The CA Security Council is a group of a small number of old-guard CAs, which has been notable recently for pushing a distinction between (automatic) domain validation, organizational validation, and Extended Validation, mostly as a response to Let's Encrypt. The "London Protocol" appears to be a proposal for formalizing the dis…

It's an interesting question: is there value to certificate identity verification ? Apple's App Store for example demands that companies wanting to publish apps have to undergo a verification process using a DUNS number. And this has been useful for example in resolving trademark and DMCA disputes. But not really sure if it's improved security in any way.

My company pays for an EV certificate, and we pin our clients to expect EV certificates in the corresponding domain names.

This gets us most of the benefits of standard certificate pinning without coupling us to any specific private key or certificate vendor.

The theory is that it’s hard(er) to fraudulently get an EV certificate issued, although—having gone through the process—it does not strike me as super secure against a determined adversary.

Re: Digicert Withdraws from the CA Security Council

#42

Post by laumars » Mon, Jul 02, 2018, 6:05 AM UTC

azernik wrote: post #32

beefsack wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's FUD to say encryption doesn't matter without authentication - unencrypted traffic is eavesdroppable by default and exposes you much more broadly than just being exposed to one potential bad actor. Of course using authentication is vastly superior, but lacking it doesn't render encryption useless.

Without authentication, a man in the middle is indistinguishable from your intended target, so you are exposed to anyone on the network path.

Lets be clear, we're not talking about self signed certs here. An attacker would still need to prove they have ownership of the domain to get a non-EV CA-signed certificate which makes a MITM attack highly challenging to the point of being down right impractical to accomplish successfully. Its not simply not a large enough threat level* to worry about since it would require either DNS spoofing (in which case why bother with a MITM anyway since you now have ownership of the traffic you can just steal people's cookies and get log in directly), or access to the domain owners email (in which case gaining access to their infrastructure becomes significantly easier depending on where it is hosted) or attacking the clients PC to install your own CA certificate (in which case yiu might as well just install a RAT or keylogger and capture inputs for all websites and thus save yourself the trouble of MITMing only one specific single domain).

* I mean if your business is online banking then it's a little different. But for 99.9% websites out there having EV isnt necessary.

Re: Digicert Withdraws from the CA Security Council

#43

Post by msh » Mon, Jul 02, 2018, 6:46 AM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #22

threeseed wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting question: is there value to certificate identity verification ? Apple's App Store for example demands that companies wanting to publish apps have to undergo a verification process using a DUNS number. And this has been useful for example in resolving trademark and DMCA disputes. But not really sure if it's improved security in any way.

Of course there is. If you don't care who you're talking to, it doesn't matter if your message is encrypted. The anonymous mystery person who decrypts your HTTPS connection might be the same person who would have MITM'd your HTTP connection. The entire concept of encryption presupposes that you care who you're talking to. If you don't, then why not just broadcast your message in the clear?

If people are on unencrypted wifi at a coffee shop anybody can passively get your credentials or see what you post.

A MITM attack requires more work to pull off.

Re: Digicert Withdraws from the CA Security Council

#44

Post by Already__Taken » Mon, Jul 02, 2018, 7:32 AM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #22

threeseed wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting question: is there value to certificate identity verification ? Apple's App Store for example demands that companies wanting to publish apps have to undergo a verification process using a DUNS number. And this has been useful for example in resolving trademark and DMCA disputes. But not really sure if it's improved security in any way.

Of course there is. If you don't care who you're talking to, it doesn't matter if your message is encrypted. The anonymous mystery person who decrypts your HTTPS connection might be the same person who would have MITM'd your HTTP connection. The entire concept of encryption presupposes that you care who you're talking to. If you don't, then why not just broadcast your message in the clear?

You might not care who you're talking to but you do probably care that you're still talking to the same/single anonymous person.

Re: Digicert Withdraws from the CA Security Council

#45

Post by KMag » Mon, Jul 02, 2018, 7:44 AM UTC

azernik wrote: post #32

beefsack wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's FUD to say encryption doesn't matter without authentication - unencrypted traffic is eavesdroppable by default and exposes you much more broadly than just being exposed to one potential bad actor. Of course using authentication is vastly superior, but lacking it doesn't render encryption useless.

Without authentication, a man in the middle is indistinguishable from your intended target, so you are exposed to anyone on the network path.

Anyone in the network path and willing to expend the computational power to decrypt and re-encrypt your traffic. Unauthenticated encryption still dramatically increases the cost of mass surveillance.

Re: Digicert Withdraws from the CA Security Council

#46

Post by tialaramex » Mon, Jul 02, 2018, 8:07 AM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #8

geofft wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's case is a little different because it lets you publish native code on the phone. (You can argue that websites effectively also publish code, but the web sandbox is probably quite a bit stronger than the iOS one.) I don't think there's much advantage in knowing that you're some registered organization. It's pretty easy to register an organization - see e.g. https://stripe.ian.sh , to which the CASC responded b…

I hadn't actually even _heard_ of "OV" before. Googling... I still can't tell what the difference between it and EV is supposed to be, other than how much someone paid a CA.

So, some years ago now, two groups had orthogonal concerns about the Web PKI, they met and reached an agreement.

The two groups are the major public Certificate Authorities and the browser vendors. The browser vendors wanted better quality certificates, to improve the trustworthiness of HTTPS (and thus of their products), the CAs wanted to push the higher-priced certs they were offering which included Subject fields like Organisation name by augmenting the browser UI.

The immediate result was EV (Extended Validation) certs, the CAs would promise to do a better job checking the identity of their subscribers before issuing these certificates (and so would charge a premium for them), and the browser vendors would mutate their UI to show the new "green bar" with the organisation name highlighted if the certificate was made to EV standards.

The side effect, and larger long term consequence was the formation of a standing meeting between the two sides, the CA/Browser Forum or CA/B Forum which now sets baseline rules for all "SSL certificates".

Over time browsers have used CA/B to improve those rules, the Baseline Requirements so that the cheapest certificates are more fit for purpose, and so in effect they got their original goals achieved for all certs - practices like issuing for non-Internet names, or issuing without SANs, or without EKUs have been driven out, and today the DV cert you buy for $5 from a reseller (or get at zero cost to you from Let's Encrypt) has a more solid basis behind it than the certs people were paying say $100 for fifteen years ago. They also got the CA/B to behave transparently, you can read most of what it discusses, as well as all votes and documents on a public website, no more meetings in (metaphorical) smoke-filled rooms.

Re: Digicert Withdraws from the CA Security Council

#47

Post by thefounder » Mon, Jul 02, 2018, 8:22 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #3

Note that this is not the CA/Browser Forum, the usual industry association you hear about. The CA Security Council is a group of a small number of old-guard CAs, which has been notable recently for pushing a distinction between (automatic) domain validation, organizational validation, and Extended Validation, mostly as a response to Let's Encrypt. The "London Protocol" appears to be a proposal for formalizing the dis…

How can they decide what certificate gets the padlock? It's really a browser decision, isn't it?

Re: Digicert Withdraws from the CA Security Council

#48

Post by jcelerier » Mon, Jul 02, 2018, 9:07 AM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #19

geofft wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's case is a little different because it lets you publish native code on the phone. (You can argue that websites effectively also publish code, but the web sandbox is probably quite a bit stronger than the iOS one.) I don't think there's much advantage in knowing that you're some registered organization. It's pretty easy to register an organization - see e.g. https://stripe.ian.sh , to which the CASC responded b…

Same-origin policy does not help you on first visit, and trust on first visit is really the hard problem that PKI was invented to solve. If you can count on a prior relationship in encryption, then you don't even really need PKI. Just mutually decide on an encryption key and then use that to encrypt/decrypt your traffic. Not every website is Twitter or Facebook or Google or a major bank, where the vast majority of vi…

plenty of people walk into stores and get robbed. sometimes it's just 1$, sometimes it's more, sometimes it's misleading advertising, but the physical world has exactly the same problems.

Re: Digicert Withdraws from the CA Security Council

#49

Post by zizek23 » Mon, Jul 02, 2018, 11:26 AM UTC

The certificate system is broken. Technical people should not be promoting centralization, raising barriers to publishing and empowering middle men. That is not a technical solution, but behavior that favours business and vested interests.

There is now a clear pattern of attempts to raise barriers and cede more control to actors in the middle.

First it was de-legitimizing http, now its standard certs, then it will be 3 years. What's stopping this degenerating into an elaborate 'approval process' from a central authority in a few years which you pay dearly for, all in the name of security?

This kind of control gives some the power and fig leaf of any 'arbritary process' to delegitimize and silence others.

Re: Digicert Withdraws from the CA Security Council

#50

Post by nailer » Mon, Jul 02, 2018, 11:40 AM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #4

geofft wrote: post #3

Note that this is not the CA/Browser Forum, the usual industry association you hear about. The CA Security Council is a group of a small number of old-guard CAs, which has been notable recently for pushing a distinction between (automatic) domain validation, organizational validation, and Extended Validation, mostly as a response to Let's Encrypt. The "London Protocol" appears to be a proposal for formalizing the dis…

It's an interesting question: is there value to certificate identity verification ? Apple's App Store for example demands that companies wanting to publish apps have to undergo a verification process using a DUNS number. And this has been useful for example in resolving trademark and DMCA disputes. But not really sure if it's improved security in any way.

Nearly every platform has something like EV - anyone can make a username or domain names that sounds official, some mechanism is needed to tie it to a real world identity.

Email/GPG has services like keybase, Instagram has verified accounts, WhatsApp does too. Even bloggers who dislike checking organisations for certs (EV) do so from verified accounts - though Twitter mistakenly tried to tie it to both noteworthiness and ethics, which they're now trying to fix.