PKI Consortium blog

2019 – Looking Back, Moving Forward
January 3, 2019 by Bruce Morton (Entrust) Attack CA/Browser Forum Certificate Expiry Chrome Code Signing DV ECC EV Forward Secrecy Identity Mis-issued Phishing PKI Policy Qualified Revocation RSA SSL/TLS TLS 1.0 TLS 1.3 Vulnerability

Looking Back at 2018

2018 was an active year for SSL/TLS. We saw the SSL/TLS certificate validity period drop to 825-days and the mass deployment of Certificate Transparency (CT). TLS 1.3 protocol was finally completed and published; and Chrome status bar security indicators changing to remove “secure” and to concentrate on “not secure.” The CA/Browser Forum has been reformed, the London Protocol was announced and the nearly full distrust of Symantec SSL completed. Here are some details on some of the 2018 happenings in the SSL/TLS ecosystem.

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.

Trust on the Public Web – The Consequences of Covert Action
November 11, 2016 by Dean Coclin Apple Chrome Firefox Mis-issued Mozilla SSL/TLS

You may have heard in the news that the Chinese Certificate Authority, WoSign, was caught backdating SHA-1 certificates to make it look like they were issued before the December 31, 2015 deadline. Why is this newsworthy?  For web-based security to remain an integral part of an ecosystem used every day by millions of people around the world, it all comes down to Trust; trust in the organization issuing the certificates, trust in the browsers that validate and display certificate information to the user, and trust by relying parties browsing web pages secured by certificates. Without trust, worldwide commerce and security on the web are at risk.

Microsoft Deploys Certificate Reputation
April 9, 2015 by Bruce Morton (Entrust) EV Google Identity Microsoft Mis-issued SSL/TLS

As we have stated previously, website owners have a concern that an attacker can have a certificate issued for their domain name. We now have two systems which will help monitor certificates for domains: Certificate Transparency (CT) and Certificate Reputation.

At the start of 2015, most certification authorities (CAs) support CT as requested by Google. CT works for extended validation (EV) SSL certificates and will allow all EV certificates to be monitored.

In March 2015, Microsoft deployed Certificate Reputation. Through the use of Windows, Internet Explorer and other applications, certificate data for all types of SSL certificates is collected and provided to Microsoft. In addition, Microsoft has stated that they don’t collect any information that could be used to identify the user.

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/)

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.

What Is Certificate Transparency and How Does It Propose to Address Certificate Mis-Issuance?
September 9, 2013 by CA Security Council Attack Mis-issued OCSP Revocation SSL/TLS TSA

As originally architected by Netscape and others in the mid-1990s, the certificate issuance process envisioned that the CA would present the certificate and its contents to the named subject who would review and accept the certificate first. Then the CA would publish the certificate to a repository. That process would establish that the certificate’s subject was aware of certificate issuance. (Otherwise, an unscrupulous CA could sign a subscriber’s public key and create a certificate for the subscriber without its knowledge.) The repository was also an independent means of obtaining and verifying the public key prior to initiating secure, authenticated communication without having to obtain it solely from the server during session negotiation.

Public Key Pinning
August 28, 2013 by Bruce Morton (Entrust) Android Chrome Google IETF Mis-issued SHA1 SSL/TLS

The current browser-certification authority (CA) trust model allows a website owner to obtain its SSL certificate from any one of a number of CAs. That flexibility also means that a certificate mis-issued by a CA other than the authorized CA chosen by the website owner, would also be accepted as trustworthy by browsers.

This problem was displayed most dramatically by the DigiNotar attack in 2011 and in a mistaken CA certificate issued by TURKTRUST in 2012. In these cases, certificates were issued to domains that were not approved by the domain owner. Fortunately, the problem was detected in both cases by public key pinning, which Google implemented in Chrome.

Some Comments on Web Security
June 5, 2013 by CA Security Council Attack CA/Browser Forum CASC Google IETF Microsoft Mis-issued Policy SSL/TLS

Steve Johnson of the Mercury News posted an article on Web security and highlighted some of the issues.

The posted issues help to explain why we created the Certificate Authority Security Council. We want to determine the issues, have them addressed and provide awareness and education on the solutions. The CAs also work with the browsers and other experts in the industry to develop standards for all CAs to be audited against through the CA/Browser Forum.