PKI Consortium blog

2015 – Looking Back, Moving Forward
January 6, 2015 by Bruce Morton (Entrust) Apple Attack CA/Browser Forum CAA Chrome Code Signing EV Firefox Forward Secrecy Google IETF Malware Microsoft MITM Mozilla OpenSSL PKI Policy RSA SHA1 SSL 3.0 SSL/TLS TLS 1.0 TLS 1.2 TLS 1.3 Vulnerability

Looking Back at 2014

End of 1024-Bit Security

In 2014, the SSL industry moved to issuing a minimum security of 2048-bit RSA certificates. Keys smaller than 2048 are no longer allowed in server certificates. In addition, Microsoft and Mozilla started to remove 1024-bit roots from their certificate stores. Hopefully, the key size change will support users through to 2030.

Code Signing Baseline Requirements
October 20, 2014 by Jeremy Rowley CA/Browser Forum CASC Code Signing Malware Microsoft Vulnerability

Code signing certificates are used to sign software objects to authenticate that they originated from a verified source, allowing developers to avoid warnings commonly displayed by application software vendors such as Microsoft operating systems and Java. A fraudulent code signing certificate can wreak havoc on networks, spreading malware and adware without restraint. Certificate Authorities are tasked with ensuring that code signing applicants are legitimate entities and provide accountability for use of the certificate.

Who Sets the Rules Governing Certification Authorities?
August 19, 2014 by Kirk Hall (Entrust) CA/Browser Forum Code Signing DV Encryption ETSI EV Google Hash Function Identity IETF Microsoft Mozilla OCSP Policy Revocation Root Program SSL/TLS WebTrust

Every time something positive is published about SSL and encryption,such as Google’s recent decision making use of https encryption a favorable rating factor for a website, or negative, such as the Heartbleed issue – bloggers and others always post questions about public Certification Authorities (CAs), including general questions on who sets the rules that govern CAs. Some bloggers seem to assume there are no rules or standards, and that CAs can operate without any requirements or limitations at all — that’s incorrect.

In the Wake of Unauthorized Certificate Issuance by the Indian CA NIC, can Government CAs Still be Considered “Trusted Third Parties”?
July 24, 2014 by Ben Wilson CA/Browser Forum CAA CASC Chrome ETSI Firefox Google Microsoft Mis-issued Mozilla OCSP PKI Policy Revocation SSL/TLS Trust List WebTrust

Short answer: Government CAs can still be considered “trusted third parties,” provided that they follow the rules applicable to commercial CAs.

Introduction

On July 8 Google announced that it had discovered several unauthorized Google certificates issued by the National Informatics Centre of India. It noted that the Indian government CA’s certificates were in the Microsoft Root Store and used by programs on the Windows platform. The Firefox browser on Windows uses its own root store and didn’t have these CA certificates. Other platforms, such as Chrome OS, Android, iOS, and OS X, were not affected. See http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2014/07/maintaining-digital-certificate-security.html

What To Do When You Rely on Internal Names in TLS/SSL Certificates
July 18, 2014 by Wayne Thayer Attack CA/Browser Forum Firefox IANA ICANN Microsoft MITM Qualified SSL/TLS

A deadline set by the CA/Browser Forum for the use of Internal Names is quickly approaching, and many system administrators need to understand how best to adapt to this change. At the same time, hundreds of new top-level domains are being launched, which redefines what constitutes an Internal Name. In this post we’ll explain what the changes are, why they’re being made, and how you can update your systems in response to the problem.

Benefits of Elliptic Curve Cryptography
June 10, 2014 by Wayne Thayer CA/Browser Forum ECC ECDH ECDSA Encryption RSA SSL/TLS

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Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) has existed since the mid-1980s, but it is still looked on as the newcomer in the world of SSL, and has only begun to gain adoption in the past few years. ECC is a fundamentally different mathematical approach to encryption than the venerable RSA algorithm. An elliptic curve is an algebraic function (y2 = x3 + ax + b) which looks like a symmetrical curve parallel to the x axis when plotted. (See figures below.) As with other forms of public key cryptography, ECC is based on a one-way property in which it is easy to perform a calculation but infeasible to reverse or invert the results of the calculation to find the original numbers. ECC uses different mathematical operations than RSA to achieve this property. The easiest way to explain this math is — for an elliptic curve, a line will only pass through three points along the curve (P, Q, and R), and that by knowing two of the points (P and Q), the other (R) can be calculated easily, but with just R, the other two, P and Q, cannot be derived.

When to Choose an Extended Validation Certificate
March 25, 2014 by Wayne Thayer CA/Browser Forum EV SSL/TLS

In our last post, we made a case for using Organizationally Validated (OV) or Extended Validation (EV) certificates for e-commerce, but we didn’t go into detail about the differences between OV and EV. EV certificates provide the highest level of assurance about your business, and they visually indicate this to your site’s visitors.

The telltale sign that a business has obtained an EV certificate for their website is commonly referred to as the “green bar” displayed in the browser. The exact form of the indicator varies in different desktop and mobile browsers, but is generally a green background, green font color, or green lock icon in the browser’s address bar. The name of the business entity identified by the certificate is often displayed within the green area. These indicators are meant to convey a high level of assurance to a site’s visitors about the reliability of the information in the certificate.

2014 – Looking Back, Moving Forward
January 6, 2014 by Bruce Morton (Entrust) Attack BEAST CA/Browser Forum CAA Code Signing ECC Encryption Forward Secrecy HSTS ICANN IETF Microsoft MITM Mozilla PKI Policy RC4 RSA SHA1 SSL/TLS TLS 1.2

Looking Back at 2013

Protocol Attacks

The year started with a couple of SSL/TLS protocol attacks: Lucky Thirteen and RC4 attack. Lucky Thirteen allows the decryption of sensitive information, such as passwords and cookies, when using the CBC-mode cipher suite. Lucky Thirteen can be mitigated by implementing software patches or preferring the cipher suite RC4.

ICANN’s Accelerated gTLD Delegation Process and How This Impacts Your Organization
December 18, 2013 by Jeremy Rowley Announcement CA/Browser Forum CASC ICANN MITM Mozilla PKI Policy Qualified Revocation SSL/TLS Vulnerability

After the CASC’s previous letter addressing ICANN’s proposal to delegate nearly 2000 new gTLDs for use on the public Internet, ICANN identified and initiated an extensive study on two significant security issues. Now, based on the conclusions of the studies, ICANN is moving forward quickly with the delegation process, delegating more than 30 in the last two months alone. With ICANN ramping up the delegation process, nearly all 2000 will be delegated under the new rules, with only .corp and .home reserved as high risk gTLDs. This post serves as an advisory for interested network administrator on how the newest ICANN decisions may affect their networks and certificates.

How Organizations Are Authenticated for SSL Certificates
November 22, 2013 by Kirk Hall (Entrust) CA/Browser Forum CSR DV EV Identity OV Phishing Policy SSL/TLS

Certification Authorities (CAs) are trusted third parties that authenticate customers before issuing SSL certificates to secure their servers.

Exactly how do CAs authenticate these organizations? And where are the rules that determine what CAs must do during authentication?

The Rules on Customer Authentication

In the past, there were no common rules applicable to CAs as to minimum steps required to authenticate a customer before issuing an SSL certificate. Instead, each CA was permitted to create its own authentication processes, and was only required to describe the process in general terms in its public Certification Practice Statement (CPS). In many cases, the CPS authentication description was vague and hard to understand, and some CAs were less diligent than others during authentication.