PKI Consortium blog

How Organizations Are Authenticated for SSL Certificates
November 22, 2013 by Kirk Hall (Entrust) CA/Browser Forum CSR DV EV Identity OV Phishing Policy SSL/TLS
Certification Authorities (CAs) are trusted third parties that authenticate customers before issuing SSL certificates to secure their servers. Exactly how do CAs authenticate these organizations? And where are the rules that determine what CAs must do during authentication? The Rules on Customer Authentication In the past, there were no common rules applicable to CAs as to minimum steps required to authenticate a customer before issuing an SSL certificate. Instead, each CA was permitted to create its own authentication processes, and was only required to describe the process in general terms in its public Certification Practice Statement (CPS).

Certificate Chains, Key Management and the Number of CAs Counted by Web Crawlers – Oh My
November 4, 2013 by Ryan Hurst CRL Microsoft OCSP PKI Policy Revocation SSL/TLS
Have you ever wondered why your web server certificate has a “chain” of other certificates associated with it? The main reason is so that browsers can tell if your certificate was issued by an organization that has been verified to meet the security, policy and operational practices that all Publicly Trusted Certificate Authorities are mandated to meet. That certificate at the top of the chain is commonly called the “root.” It’s signature on a certificate below it indicates that the organization operating the root believes that practices of the CA below it meets that same high bar.

Certificate Authority Audits and Browser Root Program Requirements
October 15, 2013 by Kirk Hall (Entrust) AICPA CA/Browser Forum CASC ETSI EV ISO ITU Microsoft Policy Qualified Root Program SSL/TLS WebTrust
Recent news stories have highlighted the need for strong security in online communications, and use of SSL certificates issued by a publicly trusted Certification Authority (CA) is perhaps the best way to achieve that. But why should the public trust SSL certificates issued from commercial CA roots, which are embedded as trust anchors in web browsers? One answer is because of the multiple layers of standards and tough requirements that all commercial CAs must meet – and for which they are audited every year.

What is Certification Authority Authorization?
September 25, 2013 by Rick Andrews CAA IETF Policy SSL/TLS
DNS Certification Authority Authorization (CAA), defined in IETF draft RFC 6844, is designed to allow a DNS domain name holder (a website owner) to specify the certificate signing certificate(s) authorized to issue certificates for that domain or website. Usually, the certificate signing certificate will belong to the Certification Authority (CA) that issues SSL certificates to you. It’s a way for you to indicate which CA or CAs you want to issue certificates for your domains.

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.

CASC Happenings at NIST
April 10, 2013 by CA Security Council CASC NIST PKI Policy SSL/TLS TSP
This week members of the CASC will be attending and speaking at the NIST Workshop on Improving Trust in the Online Marketplace. You can also follow the CASC on Twitter for more information and news at @CertCouncil, as well as see some of the presentations after the events on our SlideShare page. Even if you can’t make it to Maryland, you can still watch the event via the live webcast. Please join us for the following CASC member events:

Self-Signed Certificates Don’t Deliver Trust
April 2, 2013 by Bruce Morton (Entrust) CRL DV EV NIST OCSP Policy SSL/TLS
We’ve heard the argument that website operators could just use self-signed certificates. They are easy to issue and they are “free.” Before issuing self-signed certificates, it’s a good idea to examine the trust and security model. You should also compare self-signed certificates to the publicly trusted certification authority (CA) model; and then make your own decision. Self-Signed Certificate Model Owner says who they are Owner issues on their own policy Owner is responsible for quality Owner may not follow industry guidelines Owner may not provide certificate status Compromised certificates may not be able to be revoked Owner is not audited Issuer of certificate may not be authorized by the domain owner Certificates may not be renewed if there are no reminders Self-signed certificate model does not provide trust and the browser provides a trust dialogue box to indicate such Publicly-Trusted CA-Signed Certificate Model CA verifies the owner of the domain and the certificate applicant CA operates to a policy in conformance with the requirements of the browser and operating system vendors.

IETF 86 – Web PKI Working Group
March 21, 2013 by Bruce Morton (Entrust) CRL Google IETF OCSP PKI Policy Revocation SSL/TLS Web PKI
At the IETF 86 meeting in Orlando last week, there was a working group meeting discussing the operations of the Web PKI. At the previous IETF 85 meeting a birds-of-a-feather was held to discuss the purpose of having such a group. The result of the meeting was an established group with the charter that states purposes such as: Working group will work to improve the consistency of Web security behavior Address problems as seen by the end-users, certificate holders and CAs Describe how the Web PKI actually works Prepare documented deliverables as discussed below The meeting discussed the charter and the four following deliverables.

RSA Recap – Securing Your Site
March 8, 2013 by Ben Wilson BEAST CASC Encryption Firefox Hash Function HSTS OpenSSL Policy RSA SSL/TLS TLS 1.1 TLS 1.2 Vulnerability
At RSA last week a few of us participated in panel discussions that focused on SSL/TLS. During the panel that I moderated on Friday, one theme we addressed was secure server configuration. One of CASC’s goals is to help harden existing SSL/TLS implementations against vulnerabilities—because most SSL/TLS exploits arise from suboptimal website configurations. These vulnerabilities and attacks can be mitigated or even eliminated with proper server configuration and good website design.