PKI Consortium blog

How to do HTTPS … The Right Way
June 2, 2020 by Corey Bonnell (DigiCert) CAA Identity Phishing Site Seal SSL/TLS
With secure HTTP — aka HTTPS (the “S” is short for “secure”) — swiftly becoming universal on the Internet, it is important to know how to configure HTTPS for your website the right way. The payoff for properly securing your website has many benefits.

2018 – Looking Back, Moving Forward
January 6, 2018 by Bruce Morton (Entrust) Attack CA/Browser Forum CAA Certificate Expiry Chrome ECC Encryption Google Microsoft Mis-issued OV PDF PKI ROCA RSA SSL/TLS TLS 1.3 Vulnerability

Looking Back at 2017

2017 saw the end of SHA-1 in public trust SSL/TLS certificates and the start of Certification Authority Authorization (CAA) allowing domain owners to authorize their CA. A “Not secure” browser indication was propagated to push more websites to support HTTPS. There was also a change in the certification authority (CA) ownership with DigiCert acquiring Symantec’s SSL and related PKI business and Francisco Partners buying Comodo’s CA.

The Latest on Certification Authority Authorization
March 21, 2017 by Jeremy Rowley Attack CA/Browser Forum CAA Encryption Identity OV PKI Policy Qualified

Things are certainly heating up at the CA/Browser with exciting proposals surrounding inclusion of the Wi-Fi Alliance (WFA) as a subjectAltName otherName, new validation methods, and debates over how the CAB Forum will continue operating. One of these newly passed ballots requires all CAs to check and process a domain name’s DNS Certification Authority Authorization (CAA) resource record prior to issuing a digital certificate.

Background

RFC 6844 created CAA records as a method for domain owners to specify a policy on which certificate authorities are authorized to issue certificates for the associated domain. The basic concept is that immediately prior to issuance, the certificate authority (CA) will check the CAA record and determine whether policy permits creation of the certificate. Issuance is permitted if either a CAA record does not exist for the domain or the CAA record lists a string specified by the CA as authorizing the CA to issue the certificate. Using CAA records, the domain owner is able to control policy at a more granular level, including specifying which CA can issue wildcard certificates and how to report issues. Note, that CAA record checking is an additional requirement that occurs after the CA completes the normal domain verification process required by the CA/Browser Forum’s baseline requirements under Section 3.2.2.

2017 – Looking Back, Moving Forward
January 13, 2017 by Bruce Morton (Entrust) 3DES Apple Attack CA/Browser Forum CAA Chrome Code Signing Encryption Firefox Google Identity Malware MITM Policy Revocation RSA SSL 3.0 SSL/TLS TLS 1.3 TSA Vulnerability

Looking Back at 2016

Fortunately, 2016 was not a year full of SSL/TLS vulnerabilities. Although some researchers did prove old cryptography algorithms should be put out to pasture. The year showed the end of public-trusted SHA-1 SSL/TLS certificates. It also showed more transparency should be considered due to issues discovered with a few certification authorities (CAs). The great news is HTTPS is no longer the minority — after 20 years, connections using HTTPS has surpassed HTTP.

2016 – Looking Back, Moving Forward
December 14, 2015 by Bruce Morton (Entrust) Attack CA/Browser Forum CAA Chrome Code Signing DH Encryption Firefox Google Hash Function IETF Microsoft MITM OpenSSL Policy RC4 Revocation RSA SSL/TLS TLS 1.2 TLS 1.3 Vulnerability

Looking Back at 2015

A number of new tactics proved 2015 was no exception to an active year defending against ever increasing security issues. Vendors found new and creative ways to provide vulnerabilities including the now popular man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks.  MitM as well as a host of other new vulnerabilities caused browsers to rethink their security requirements.  This article gives a flashback of the exploits and industry changes from 2015 and looks ahead at the latest security requirements and how it impacts IT security teams.

Fighting the Good Fight for Online Trust
April 2, 2015 by CA Security Council Apple CAA CASC Google HSM Mis-issued MITM Mozilla Policy Root Program SSL/TLS WebTrust

Once again Browsers and Certificate Authorities are in the news over the reported mis-issuance of an SSL server certificate to a google.com domain. Discovered by Google most likely via technology known as key pinning and discussed by Google’s Adam Langley in this blog, a Chinese certificate authority, CNNIC (Chinese Internet Network Information Center), apparently issued an intermediate certificate to an Egyptian company called MCS Holdings. Because the CNNIC root certificate is included in the root store of most major browsers, users would not see any warnings on sites that have certificates issued by CNNIC or MCS Holdings. When MCS installed their intermediate into a Man in the Middle (MITM) proxy device, that device could then issue certificates for sites which users connected to that proxy would visit. (MITM is described in more detail in our previous blog here: https://casecurity.org/2015/01/08/gogo-found-spoofing-google-ssl-certificates/)

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.

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

CA Security Council Members Presentation at RSA 2014 Conference: New Ideas on CAA, CT, and Public Key Pinning for a Safer Internet
March 17, 2014 by Kirk Hall (Entrust) Attack CAA CASC Chrome EV Google IETF Microsoft Mis-issued OCSP Revocation RSA SSL/TLS Vulnerability

CA Security Council (CASC) members Trend Micro, Go Daddy, and Symantec participated in a discussion panel at the 2014 RSA Conference in San Francisco on February 24 entitled “New Ideas on CAA, CT, and Public Key Pinning for a Safer Internet.” Panel members included Kirk Hall of Trend Micro (Moderator), Wayne Thayer of GoDaddy (Panelist), and Rick Andrews of Symantec (Panelist).

Introduction to the Topic

Hall began by introducing the topic – all three alternative technologies (Certificate Transparency or CT, Certificate Authority Authorization or CAA, and Certificate Pinning) are intended to make the internet safer by dealing with mis-issued digital certificates, including so-called “rogue” certs like those obtained by a hacker from the now-defunct Diginotar Certification Authority (CA). Mis-issued certs generally present the greatest potential danger when they are for the most popular fraud target domains, such as mail.google.com, login.yahoo.com, login.live.com, etc.

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.