Chinese CA WoSign faces revocation after possibly issuing fake certificates • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by 0x0 » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 4:24 PM UTC

tobias3 wrote: post #58

buraktamturk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same company also cheats on issuance date to support SHA1 signatures. I heard it on HN on another topic. Edit: source https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.security... Incident 2 ---------- In July 2016, it became clear that there was some problems with the StartEncrypt automatic issuance service recently deployed by the CA StartCom. As well as other problems it had, which are outside the scope of t…

This is also not very encouraging: > R: Sorry, I don't say it clear, please forgive my bad English since my native language is Chinese. As I said this is my fault that we don't understand the Mozilla policy clearly that we don't think we need to report. But now we are clear that all mis-issued certificate case and any reported bug related system change also need to report. I and every related employee all clear now,…

Amateur hour. You'd think understanding the rules of the game would be a prerequisite to be a warden of the entire TLS ecosystem, as any unrestricted CA is.

It's not comforting that the entire security of https globally is now in the hands of someone unable to read the CA requirements, and doesn't even seem to worry about that fact.

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

#62

Post by newjersey » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 4:24 PM UTC

ak217 wrote: post #55

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 see two solutions to big CAs. One is to reengineer the CA trust system to delegate limited authority to CAs (e.g. there is no good reason for a CA in the US to be able to sign certificates with Chinese TLD CNs, and vice versa). The second is to build out the Certificate Transparency project to the point where the revocation of trust due to a mis-issued certificate is immediate, widespread, and automatic.

> The second is to build out the Certificate Transparency project to the point where the revocation of trust due to a mis-issued certificate is immediate, widespread, and automatic.

I'd love to hear more about this. How would it work?

Lets Encrypt gets a lot of flack because their certs need to renew every three months. I can't imagine why bad actors wouldn't immediately try to swamp any system of revocation with requests.

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

#63

Post by mariuolo » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 4:24 PM UTC

koolba wrote: 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…

I won't comment on the specifics of this case, but a more nuanced approach regarding security is preferable because it favours transparency.

If a vendor/CA/whatever knows that they will die if anything comes out, they will bury things like this even deeper.

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

#64

Post by cm2187 » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 4:26 PM UTC

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #27

cm2187 wrote: 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 solution for big banks is the orderly failure. Things like bail-in, where a bank is required to be able to go through a flash chapter-11 process over a week end. Or the "living will", basically the bank preparing a contingency plan in advance if it needs to wind down its activity.

In the CA world, I would assume this would require a standard protocol across CA to request, renew and transfer certificates from CA providers automatically. A sort of commercial version of the ACME protocol. But that requires lots of infrastructure change not just on the CA side, all servers would have to be updated.

This is long overdue anyway. It is currently way too complex to request, install and keep updated a certificate. And there isn't enough competition in this market.

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

#65

Post by mlvljr » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 4:28 PM UTC

wildmusings wrote: post #30

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?

And look, how they immediately dispatched an army of downvoting trolls to hide your comment!

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

#66

Post by psz » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 4:28 PM UTC

0x0 wrote: post #50

So what's the relation to StartCom/StartSSL? I remember reading some comments about half a year ago mentioning that the startssl website suddenly was hosted on Chinese IP addresses, just around the time they redesigned the web page. This seemed fishy enough back then that I finally switched from startssl to letsencrypt for non-wildcard certs and actually started paying a different CA for wildcart certs... Did the Sta…

Looks like Eddy Nigg was recently attending the cabforum minutes: https://cabforum.org/2016/06/09/2016-06-09-minutes/

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

#67

Post by joosters » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 4:32 PM UTC

0x0 wrote: post #56

joosters wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Site operators need to be more aware of which CAs they're using How? I've got no way to judge the security / responsibility of any CA. The amount of money that they charge may have no relation to their behaviour. I don't think anyone has claimed that the CAs who issued wrong certs were charging less than their competitors. You can't blame the CA customers for this.

Very often, marketing material and the language used for for that is a good indicator on whether a particular service knows their stuff, or if they appear to peddle fluff... :) How CAs respond to issues on these mailing lists and in bugzilla is also pretty telling. In this particular case, there's been concerns raised for several days. An extra vigilant web site operator who sees these discussions might perhaps come…

Very often, marketing material and the language used for for that is a good indicator on whether a particular service knows their stuff, or if they appear to peddle fluff... :)

We're all doomed then! Asides from LetsEncrypt, most CA web pages are full of marketing fluff :)

I've just been reading through the mailing list discussion, and from that I agree with you completely, WoSign looks pretty incompetent in their responses. If I had a WoSign certificate, I'd definitely be looking around to get an alternative now. However, that's a bit late for 'people power' to force CAs to act better.

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

#68

Post by 0x0 » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 4:38 PM UTC

psz wrote: post #66

0x0 wrote: post #50

So what's the relation to StartCom/StartSSL? I remember reading some comments about half a year ago mentioning that the startssl website suddenly was hosted on Chinese IP addresses, just around the time they redesigned the web page. This seemed fishy enough back then that I finally switched from startssl to letsencrypt for non-wildcard certs and actually started paying a different CA for wildcart certs... Did the Sta…

Looks like Eddy Nigg was recently attending the cabforum minutes: https://cabforum.org/2016/06/09/2016-06-09-minutes/

From what I've seen earlier, he's appeared to have a clue or two about SSL. I wonder what's going on with wosign+startssl despite that? Isn't it all very related?

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

#69

Post by joosters » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 4:38 PM UTC

aianus wrote: post #54

rblatz wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I attempted to remove all StartCom certs from the OS X keychain, apparently you can't do it even as root. You have to boot into the recovery partition first. http://superuser.com/questions/1070664/security-seckeychaini... Edit: Don't delete them, instead right click each certificate, select "Get Info", Expand the "Trust" panel, and set it to "Never Trust"

You don't have to remove them, you can just set the 'Trust' setting to 'Never Trust'.

I can't remember whether it was MacOS or Windows, but at least one OS will sometimes re-install a 'standard' CA certificate if you delete it. Setting 'never trust' is the most reliable way to kick out the CA as it ensures that it stays out.

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

#70

Post by geofft » Tue, Aug 30, 2016, 4:45 PM UTC

ak217 wrote: post #59

geofft wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need the CA to either have been cooperating with CT all along, or have kept a copy of all the certs it ever issued, neither of which an incompetent CA is likely to have done. Symantec, whom one would expect to be one of the more competent CAs out there, cannot do this: https://security.googleblog.com/2015/10/sustaining-digital-c... But Google did require them to use CT for all new certificates, which I think they…

You may not be able to immediately spot a bad CA, but the more major CAs buy in to CT, the easier it is to spot fraudulent certs through fingerprint reporting. SSL clients can then choose to have a side-channel trust revocation mechanism. Once adoption snowballs, the overall level of trust in the system will rise. The other problem is that CAs need to be regionally confined in which TLD CNs they can issue certs for.

> The other problem is that CAs need to be regionally confined in which TLD CNs they can issue certs for.

Ryan Sleevi makes a good argument here about why that's bad policy for the internet:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.security.policy/...

There are some good arguments in both directions on that thread. I do happen to like the world in which, say, Let's Encrypt is capable of issuing for any TLD. If we don't think WoSign is good enough for signing .com, we probably shouldn't be exposing .cn users to those attacks, either.