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I don't get the tone of the article. Why is this a bad thing? It's not the job of SSL to ensure a domain name is not owned by someone it shouldn't be. That fal
by jpgvm 11y ago
I don't get the tone of the article. Why is this a bad thing?
It's not the job of SSL to ensure a domain name is not owned by someone it shouldn't be. That falls to the domain registrar, if you have a problem with someone owning google.com.mg go take it up with the registrar or better yet leave it up to Google as it's THEIR trademark.
I actually find this to be a good thing that someone was able to get a domain, create an SSL certificate for it painlessly and start securing traffic between clients and their web property without having to spend a) tons of money and b) tons of time dealing with antiquated CAs that should be entirely automated.
- colinbartlett 11y agoThe tone of the article is such because the company writing it only sells EV certs and therefore is on a relentless quest to discredit DV certs as inferior.
- nailer 11y agoAuthor here: DV certificates are inferior. Knowing whose key you're encrypting with is a good thing. DNS providers do not do identity checks. Edit: 100% agreed with laumars' point below regarding blogs and low trust sites. DV certificates have their place, it's just that high trust websites aren't it. I've added an author tag as requested.
- laumars 11y agoIf I'm connecting to my bank or preferred e-commerce store, then yes. If I'm connecting to Joe's wordpress blog or some random wiki then I barely care if the site is even under TLS to begin with, let alone whether the site had passed a human authorisation process prior to receiving their certificate. And frankly, the vast majority of internet go-ers are non-technical and wouldn't even notice the different between DV and EV certificates (let alone care), so I question just how well EV even solves the problem you're claiming to address. It's also generally good etiquette to disclose when you're the author and employee of the company in question (a company that specifically sells EV certificates) when replying on HN; since that highlights biases regarding your arguments
- sloanroyal 11y agoPerson who just registered certsimple.org and certsimple.net here. Will you issue me a EV cert?
- colinbartlett 11y agoThat's pretty hilarious. I'm sure even if CertSimple won't issue you an EV cert that one of the many providers others will.
- sloanroyal 11y agoI just noticed he's in the UK, so surely he's registered certsimple.co.uk, right? Nope. Yay, now I have another domain! I will begin issuing EV certs via my new company 'Certs Imple Limited' very soon. You can trust us, we have more domains than that other fly by night organization does.
- HappyTypist 11y agoAnd furthermore, you shouldn't need to get your identity verified and send in pictures of your ID just to make a website, blog, or custom email domain.
- nailer 11y ago> it's not the job of SSL to ensure a domain name is not owned by someone it shouldn't be. That's correct. CAs checked identity back in the 90s, but stopped and moved to domain validation for most certificates. The article mentions explicitly: the certificates aren't fake, they're just DV, and that's what DV is. Obviously most consumers have no idea about that, and have been conditioned to trust any kind of SSL. The main issue asides from most consumers having no idea what DV is, is that Section 4.2 of the baseline requirements - which applies to all CAs - asks CAs to check for 'high risk' domains. That's clearly broken here. Certificate transparency records for the domains in question: https://crt.sh/?q=google.com.%25 https://crt.sh/?q=google.com.%25
- detaro 11y ago> Obviously most consumers have no idea about that, and have been conditioned to trust any kind of SSL. Is that actually the case? If I see a "check for HTTPS!" reminder, most of them clearly show and talk about the name from a DV cert.