PKI Consortium blog

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.

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?

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. Push to Perfect Forward Secrecy Following the Edward Snowden revelations of pervasive surveillance, there was a big push to configure web servers to support Perfect Forward Secrecy.

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.

Reducing the Impact of Government Spying
April 4, 2014 by Jeremy Rowley CASC Encryption Forward Secrecy Malware PKI RC4 RSA SHA2 SSL/TLS TLS 1.1 Vulnerability
Last year, Edward Snowden, an American computer-specialist working as a contractor for the National Security Agency (“NSA”), shocked web-users around the world by publicizing documents showing that the NSA was gathering intelligence on Internet users. The realization that the US government was gathering sensitive information has led to a worldwide demand for better protection of online communication and data and a general worry about the effectiveness of existing infrastructures. Specifically, some entities have asked whether PKI is still a robust way to protect online information.

Certificate Reputation
March 28, 2014 by Bruce Morton (Entrust) Microsoft MITM OCSP PKI SSL/TLS
One of the advantages of having multiple certification authorities (CAs) from which to choose an SSL certificate is that customers have flexibility to choose a CA that meets their specific needs, or even use a number of CAs for redundancy or to have access to a broader toolset. The disadvantage for end users, however, is that they often may not know if a particular CA was authorized to issue the certificate, and there could be a chance that the certificate was fraudulently obtained.

CA Day in Berlin
January 24, 2014 by Dean Coclin eIDAS ETSI EV Microsoft PKI Qualified Root Program RSA SSL/TLS TSP
“CA Day” (also known as CA Conformity Assessment) was hosted by the German company TuVIT in Berlin on January 16, 2014. In attendance were approximately 100 people from mostly European CAs. Under the European regulatory framework, CAs are included in a group referred to as “Trust Service Providers” or “TSPs.” CASC members in attendance at CA Day were Symantec, Digicert and Comodo. The dominant theme for this CA Day was the draft Regulation on Electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market (eIDAS) and upcoming changes in EU regulations for Qualified Certificates, which was briefed by Gerard Galler from the European Commission and discussed in greater detail by several European TSPs.

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. That being said, RC4 was also attacked, where through 16 million sessions a small amount of plaintext can be recovered.

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 .

SHA-1 Deprecation, On to SHA-2
December 16, 2013 by Bruce Morton (Entrust) Code Signing Microsoft PKI Policy SHA1 SSL/TLS
We have previously reviewed implementation of SHA-2, but with Bruce Schneier stating the need to migrate away from SHA-1 and the SHA-1 deprecation policy from Microsoft, the industry must make more progress in 2014. Web server administrators will have to make plans to move from SSL and code signing certificates signed with the SHA-1 hashing algorithm to certificates signed with SHA-2. This is the result of the new Microsoft Root Certificate Policy where Microsoft deprecates SHA-1 and imposes the following requirements: