PKI Consortium blog

Quantum Computing: Real or Exaggerated Threat to the Web PKI?
August 30, 2017 by Dean Coclin, Tim Hollebeek Encryption PKI Quantum RSA SSL/TLS Web PKI
Twenty years ago, paying your phone or electric bill involved receiving it in the mail, writing a check and mailing it back to the company. Today, that has largely been replaced by email and web-based payment submittals. All of this is secured by digital certificates and encryption, which provide privacy and authentication of information transiting the open Internet (aka Web PKI). The web PKI is predominantly secured by RSA encryption algorithms; mathematical theorems which have been improved over time.

How Browser Security Indicators Can Protect You from Phishing
June 6, 2017 by Chris Bailey (Entrust), Kirk Hall (Entrust) Chrome DV Encryption EV Google Identity Phishing SSL/TLS
The media is full of stories about how phishing sites are moving rapidly to encryption using anonymous, free DV certificates they use to imitate login pages for popular sites, such as paypal.com. As noted in the article PayPal Phishing Certificates Far More Prevalent than Previously Thought, more than 14,000 DV SSL certificates have been issued to PayPal phishing sites since the start of 2016. Based on a random sample, 96.

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.

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.

The Web Is Moving From HTTP to HTTPS
November 21, 2016 by Dean Coclin Chrome Encryption Google SSL/TLS
The four letters, “http”, are known to technical and non-technical users alike as the beginning of any web address. These have been ubiquitous for many years. But things are about to change. Pretty soon, you won’t be able to go to many popular websites just by using those 4 letters. You will need to add an “s” at the end (https). Why is this happening? What are the reasons for this change?

Always-On SSL
September 30, 2016 by Rick Andrews, Ben Wilson Encryption Firefox Google Identity Microsoft Mixed Content OpenSSL Policy Qualified SSL/TLS
There is no doubt that content owners and publishers have a duty to encourage trust and the confidence during internet usage by adopting security best practices. If a customer believes that their data and identity are safe and protected, they are more inclined to continue their online transactions. Industry best practices for website protection should be vendor-neutral, easy to implement, and globally accessible. Websites should take all the reasonable steps possible to adopt best practices in secure design and implementation, and this includes using Always-On SSL across the entire website.

How a SWEET32 Birthday Attack is Deployed and How to Prevent It
September 7, 2016 by Bruce Morton (Entrust) 3DES Attack Encryption RC4 SSH SSL/TLS TLS 1.0
Details surrounding the SWEET32: Birthday attacks on 64-bit block ciphers in TLS and OpenVPN can be found in the paper released by Karthikeyan Bhargavan and Gaëtan Leurent from INRIA in France. The paper shows that cipher suites using 64-bit block length ciphers are vulnerable to plaintext recovery attacks. As such, Triple-DES (3DES) and Blowfish are vulnerable. Here’s an overview. Vulnerabilities to a SWEET32 Birthday Attack Certain scenarios are pre-disposed to a SWEET32 Birthday attack.

TLS Certificates on the Web – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
May 17, 2016 by Rick Andrews CA/Browser Forum Code Signing ECC Encryption EV Hash Function PKI Policy RSA SSL/TLS
It might be hard to believe, but the SSL/TLS Ecosystem is nearly 20 years old. It’s time to take stock and see how we’re doing with regards to TLS certificates. In this article, we’ll primarily discuss certificates themselves and not web server configuration, although that is often a source of problems. In the last few years, we’ve endured three major certificate-based migrations: Away from the MD2 and MD5 hash algorithms to SHA-1 Away from small RSA keys to 2048-bit keys or larger Away from the SHA-1 hash algorithm to SHA-256 What’s driving these migrations?

Stay Safe This Tax Season by Looking for SSL/TLS Certificates
March 30, 2016 by Ben Wilson Encryption EV Identity SSL/TLS
It’s tax filing season again, and you need to be aware of scams that tried to steal your sensitive information or even your tax refund. During 2015 the IRS blocked over 4.3 million suspicious returns and more than 1.4 million confirmed identity theft returns. https://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroom/IRS,-States-and-Tax-Industry-Combat-Identity-Theft-and-Refund-Fraud-on-Many-Fronts. Phishing emails, account compromise, identity theft, and fake websites are a few approaches used by cyber criminals this time of year. Good computer security hygiene will usually protect you from someone else filing a tax return in your name.

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.