PKI Consortium blog

The CA Security Council Looks Ahead to 2020 and Beyond
January 9, 2020 by Patrick Nohe (GlobalSign), Doug Beattie (GlobalSign) Apple CA/Browser Forum Chrome Edge Encryption EV Firefox Forward Secrecy GDPR Google Identity Microsoft Mozilla PKI Policy Qualified SSL 3.0 SSL/TLS TLS 1.0 TLS 1.1 TLS 1.2 TLS 1.3 Web PKI

A whirlwind of activity will cause dramatic shifts across the PKI world in the year ahead

Suffice it to say that 2019 was filled with challenges and contentiousness as Certificate Authorities and Browsers began to watch their shared visions diverge. The debate around Extended Validation continued as CAs pushed for a range of reforms and browsers pushed to strip its visual indicators. And a ballot to shorten maximum certificate validity periods exposed fault-lines at the CAB Forum.

The Advantages of Short-Lived SSL Certificates for the Enterprise
July 18, 2019 by Doug Beattie (GlobalSign) CRL Mozilla Revocation SSL/TLS Vulnerability

Short validity period certificates are becoming ever more common to reduce the scope of data compromised if a server vulnerability is uncovered, such as HeartBleed.  Good security practice dictates changing keys on a regular basis, normally annually, but if you want to limit your exposure further, you can replace your certificates and underlying keys more frequently.

Sandstorm is an open source server software that makes it easy to install web apps. In order to solve the problem of setting up DNS without too much complication, Sandstorm announced the release of Sandcats.io. Sandcats.io is a free DNS service which takes 120 seconds to go from an empty Linux virtual machine to a working personal server with a DNS name and HTTPS. The DNS service runs on the sandcats.io server while the “personal server” runs on each individual customers’ computers.

What Are Subordinate CAs and Why Would You Want Your Own?
June 26, 2019 by Doug Beattie (GlobalSign) CA/Browser Forum Chrome Code Signing CRL ECC eIDAS Encryption EV HSM Identity Microsoft OCSP PKI Policy Revocation RSA S/MIME SSL/TLS

Digital certificate and PKI adoption has changed quite a bit in recent years. Gone are the days where certificates were only synonymous with SSL/TLS; compliance drivers like stronger authentication requirements and digital signature regulations (e.g. eIDAS) have greatly expanded the role of PKI within the enterprise.

As PKI usage has expanded, conversation has moved beyond just the number and type of certificates needed and onto deeper dialogue about custom PKI deployments. A large part of the conversation is around subordinate CAs, sometimes referred to as Issuing or Intermediate CAs, and why an organization might want their own. Let’s discuss.

Lenovo Enables Man-in-the-Middle Attacks Via Superfish Adware
February 20, 2015 by Doug Beattie (GlobalSign) Attack Code Signing Firefox Malware Microsoft MITM Mixed Content SSL/TLS Vulnerability

Lenovo is selling computers that contain the Superfish application which “supplements” the user’s SSL sessions to enable their adware application to deliver content transparently; however, due to poor security design this leaves users vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.

How it was supposed to work

Superfish uses the program “Visual Discovery” to process images in browser content and then displays ads for similar goods and services. This sounds like any other adware application, but in order to maintain SSL sessions and not alert users with security warnings, Superfish is serving up these images over https. They were able to do this by creating SSL certificates on the fly that imitate the certificates on the “real” websites they have intercepted and using them in a local SSL proxy to deliver content from the Visual Discovery server over the same apparent domain, without clearly revealing what they have done.  This is a classic “man in the middle” or MITM process.