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Our First Certificate Is Now Live

letsencrypt.org

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Re: Our First Certificate Is Now Live

#51

Post by RyanZAG »

superuser2 wrote: post #47
RyanZAG wrote: post #44

Does anybody know if there is any protection built in against MITM or DNS poisoning attacks? It feels like this makes network hop security far more important. If I'm able to insert a MITM or DNS poisoning anywhere between where letsencrypt.org's servers are and where it thinks the requesting server should be then I can generate a false certificate. For example, Amazon's DNS resolves for letsencrypt as 1.2.3.4 which r…

Any CA performing domain ownership validation would be vulnerable to the same thing. If you can fake its WHOIS requests or make it appear as if the domain making the request does in fact have the "canary" file they told you to host to prove ownership, then you can get any CA to give you a cert for any site. You have to trust something .

Agreed - but by making this a fully automated system you open up an easily testable and repeatable source of attack.

I don't think "You have to trust something" is really right in this case, as you're basically saying "You have to trust every single router between letsencrypt and every server on the internet".

I guess it's correct that with most current CAs now automating a lot of this with minimal manual checks, this is probably happening already? I wonder how many amazon.com valid certs are floating around the place? (Or more likely, smaller sites where people wouldn't be checking if the cert is really valid). The original point behind the costs charged by Thawte et al was that they would actually validate that you're who you say you are. I guess that ship has sailed though.

Re: Our First Certificate Is Now Live

#52

Post by velox_io »

hueving wrote: post #30
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well. I missed that memo. Or rather I kinda sorta knew it was getting devalued, but a Padlock in my browser is something I trust . If it's not trust worthy or verified should we not go the whole hog, dump trusted public keys from all browsers and move to the web-of-trust / certificate pinning. From the blog: just too much of a hassle. The application process can be confusing. It usually costs money. It’s tricky to in…

The padlock means you are connecting to the owner of that domain. That's a very valuable guarantee. EV validation and whatnot is essentially a nice way to burn a ton of money on borderline extortion.

Vanilla SSL verifies the the website is legit, EV verifies that the business is legit. More competition will lower the price, there's tons of room for cheaper & faster EV providers.

Re: Our First Certificate Is Now Live

#53

Post by icebraining »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #18
tokenizerrr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not what regular style certificates verify. That is what Extended Validation certificates verify and they're not issued by letsencrypt.org and generally are a lot more expensive. The only thing that regular-style certificates verify (this is what current CAs do, you can also grab a free one with automatic validation at https://www.startssl.com/ ) is that the person who controls the domain name has requested t…

> This is not what regular style certificates verify. That is what Extended Validation certificates verify and they're not issued by letsencrypt.org and generally are a lot more expensive. I'd like to see LetsEncrypt move into this territory though. What current private business providers are charging for this service is border-line extortion.

FWIW, you can already get an SSL cert for $4/year.

Re: Our First Certificate Is Now Live

#54

Post by neoCrimeLabs »

dtech wrote: post #37
ck2 wrote: post #23

Everyone repeat after me, wildcards, wildcards, wildcards. (just hoping they will appear next year) One more nail in the coffin of the ssl cert mafia.

They won't support those on launch? Altough because of SNI ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication ) the need for wildcard certificates has greatly diminished.

Agreed.

SNI and SubjectAltName [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubjectAltName] mixed with the simplicity of issuing a new certificate using LetsEncrypt [https://letsencrypt.org/howitworks/] all but eliminate the need for wildcards.

Re: Our First Certificate Is Now Live

#56

Post by Buge »

hartator wrote: post #55

Getting NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID on https://helloworld.letsencrypt.org/

>Our cross signature is not yet in place, however this certificate is fully functional for clients with the ISRG root in their trust store. When we are cross signed, approximately a month from now, our certificates will work just about anywhere while our root propagates.

Re: Our First Certificate Is Now Live

#57

Post by Nadya »

hartator wrote: post #55

Getting NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID on https://helloworld.letsencrypt.org/

Visit it on http and it explains why.

>Let's Encrypt hasn't yet been added as a trusted authority to the major browsers (that will be happening soon), so for now, you'll need to add the ISRG root certificate yourself.

Re: Our First Certificate Is Now Live

#58

Post by 0x0 »

superuser2 wrote: post #47
RyanZAG wrote: post #44

Does anybody know if there is any protection built in against MITM or DNS poisoning attacks? It feels like this makes network hop security far more important. If I'm able to insert a MITM or DNS poisoning anywhere between where letsencrypt.org's servers are and where it thinks the requesting server should be then I can generate a false certificate. For example, Amazon's DNS resolves for letsencrypt as 1.2.3.4 which r…

Any CA performing domain ownership validation would be vulnerable to the same thing. If you can fake its WHOIS requests or make it appear as if the domain making the request does in fact have the "canary" file they told you to host to prove ownership, then you can get any CA to give you a cert for any site. You have to trust something .

If the registrar held the job of being a CA, then at least there wouldn't be a spoofable link between the CA and the domain owner - the registrar already has your account information and proof of ownership, 100% verified, when your domain is held with them...

Re: Our First Certificate Is Now Live

#59

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

dtech wrote: post #39
bracewel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major problem with this is that the IETF validation working group hasn't come up with a definite procedure for deciding what the apex of a domain is, and how to validate control over all subdomains above it yet.

Doesn't ownership of domain.tld also imply ownership of *.domain.tld?

I don't think the owner of "co.uk" should have the power to issue certificates for everything below it.

Re: Our First Certificate Is Now Live

#60

Post by nailer »

0x0 wrote: post #58
superuser2 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any CA performing domain ownership validation would be vulnerable to the same thing. If you can fake its WHOIS requests or make it appear as if the domain making the request does in fact have the "canary" file they told you to host to prove ownership, then you can get any CA to give you a cert for any site. You have to trust something .

If the registrar held the job of being a CA, then at least there wouldn't be a spoofable link between the CA and the domain owner - the registrar already has your account information and proof of ownership, 100% verified, when your domain is held with them...

Sure, but registrars would need to start doing a lot better job of checking the identity of people applying for domains, otherwise we'd just end up with domain validated certificates all over again.

As the grandparent post notes, all CAs completely automate domian validation at present.

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