PKI Consortium blog

Secure Your Website with HSTS
October 8, 2014 by Bruce Morton (Entrust) Attack Chrome Encryption Firefox Google HSTS Policy SSL/TLS
Is your website secure? One thing to consider is securing your website with HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS). Implementation of HSTS is an extension of the Always-On SSL policy. For each website you want to protect with HSTS, you must first deploy an SSL/TLS certificate (if you haven’t already), and configure that website to be accessible only via HTTPS, not via HTTP. Then you convey to HSTS-enabled browsers that your site is only available with HTTPS, by sending the HSTS header value.

Google Plans to Deprecate SHA-1 Certificates – Updated
September 24, 2014 by CA Security Council Announcement Attack CASC Chrome Code Signing Google Microsoft Policy SHA1 SSL/TLS
UPDATED September 23, 2014: The following blog post has been updated with action taken in recent weeks, as well as to reflect helpful user comments left on our August 28 blog post on this topic. On August 19, Google announced a new policy that accelerates the deprecation of SHA-1 certificates, potentially causing websites using SHA-1 certificates to display warnings in the near future. While keeping with an earlier Microsoft announcement to accept SHA-1 certificates with an expiration date before Jan.

Google Plans to Deprecate SHA-1 Certificates
August 28, 2014 by CA Security Council Attack CASC Chrome Code Signing Google Microsoft Policy SSL/TLS
On August 19, Google announced a new policy that accelerates the deprecation of SHA-1 certificates, potentially causing websites using SHA-1 certificates to display warnings in the near future. With the change, Chrome 39 will show a warning for sites that have a SHA-1 certificate expiring in 2016 and require a click through warning for sites with a SHA-1 certificate expiring in 2017 or later. This proposal is scheduled for Chrome 39, which could be released as early as 12 weeks from now.

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.

Always-On SSL, Part II
February 5, 2014 by Ben Wilson Encryption Firefox Mixed Content Policy Qualified SSL/TLS
The SSL/TLS protocol has more to offer than just providing you with transmission encryption. Its main benefit is that it provides a way for third parties to authenticate connections to your website over the Internet. A user who can connect to your site and retrieve information via SSL/TLS will have greater assurance and trust that information came from you. The point of Always-On SSL is that once a user is able to create an authenticated connection to your point of presence via https, then he or she should not be bounced back outside of that zone of protection.

Intermediate CA Certificates and Their Potential For Misuse For Man-In-The-Middle Attacks
January 9, 2014 by Robin Alden (Sectigo) Attack Firefox Google MITM Policy Root Program SSL/TLS Vulnerability
We have seen recently that Google detected that publicly trusted TLS/(SSL) certificates had been created for Google domains without having been requested by Google themselves. The existence of such certificates might usually be taken as an indication of misissuance by the issuing CA (i.e. a failure or mistake by the CA which allowed the issuance of an end-entity certificate otherwise than in accordance with their policy) or as an indication of compromise of the issuing CA.

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: