8 ms·

StartCom has always been scummy. We've created hundreds of certificates in clear violation of their ToS and they ignored it after we payed some hush money; and

by creshal 10y ago

StartCom has always been scummy. We've created hundreds of certificates in clear violation of their ToS and they ignored it after we payed some hush money; and then there's the whole "asking for money to revoke certificates affected by heartbleed" affair. And StartEncrypt. Both should be revoked.

onli 10y ago
The whole CA system should be abolished. The only thing needed is certificates for domain control, as LE does. We need one or two non-profit organizations for that who do that work transparently. Remove the market from where should be none.
- thesimon 10y ago
  >The only thing needed is certificates for domain control, as LE does EV certs are quite useful for special sites like banking though.
  - creshal 10y ago
    Why? As long as there's a single rogue CA that lets people print EV certs without due diligence, the whole system is a farce.
    - verroq 10y ago
      Not with CT and pinning.
      - mjevans 10y ago
        At that point why have EV instead of actually doing real security and prompting the user to verify the certificate (and remembering what they approved)?
        thesimon 10y ago
        I don't think my mother knows how to verify the certificate and certificate chain.
        Kadin 10y ago
        Unless your mother knows not to go to a site without an EV certificate, it doesn't really matter that much. The certificate pinning is valuable in terms of preventing MITMs by rogue CAs, but the EV itself doesn't seem to really add much.
        stephenr 10y ago
        > Unless your mother knows not to go to a site without an EV certificate "Make sure it says <company name> in green at the top" is much easier than "ok now check any intermediary certs, and of course make sure they have the right fingerprint"
- Arnt 10y ago
  What we have is DANE and 0 nonprofits. Instead you add RRs in the domain (which you control, right?).
  - drdaeman 10y ago
    > domain (which you control, right?) You never control a domain - ICANN, your TLD registry and your immediate domain registrar do. So, technically, it's just replacing one trust vector with another. However, given that we don't have a proper crypto in DNS (not even DNSSEC which many don't like and urge to abolish), it would be terrible. Anyone who can feed you spoofed DNS responses (i.e. starting from a cafe hotspot) would be able to impersonate just anything.
    - okket 10y ago
      > You never control a domain Then don't use DNS if you can't trust it? You have to trust at some point. Or create your own infrastructure and convince others to trust you, if you want more than a private network. > Anyone who can feed you spoofed DNS responses The tendency goes towards running your own local DNS resolver. It was not possible in the 90s, but since then both the network and computer got a lot faster and smarter. DNSSEC has also evolved quite a bit and is the best we will get for long time. I really encourage to have a look again before dismissing it outright. http://blog.easydns.org/2015/08/06/for-dnssec/ http://blog.easydns.org/2015/08/06/for-dnssec/
      - drdaeman 10y ago
        > Then don't use DNS if you can't trust it? Same with CAs, but I believe it's easier to distrust a rogue CA than a rogue name registry. I mean, if there's a news that some .example TLD is in bed with NSA, Chinese government and Russian FSB - there isn't much we can do about that, isn't it? And I guess most businesses won't go as far as changing their domain name. At the same time, on most devices I saw, distrusting a CA wasn't terribly complicated. And can be done by a browser or OS vendor, with a version upgrade, as well. > http://blog.easydns.org/2015/08/06/for-dnssec/ http://blog.easydns.org/2015/08/06/for-dnssec/ Thanks for the link. Looks like an interesting reading.
lima 10y ago
Yet, StartCom's free certificates were the reason my sites have had SSL certificates for years.
- NoGravitas 10y ago
  I moved my personal site from StartSSL (which I had used for years) to Let's Encrypt a few months ago. It was really painless, and I recommend it.
- creshal 10y ago
  Not that positive if StartCom also gave others free certificates for your sites.
  - lima 10y ago
    My experience with StartCom was that they were incredibly responsive (Eddy himself answered some of my customer support tickets, sometimes within 20 minutes late at night) and they manually checked every single certificate request and even refused one. I requested a certificate for a company website and they wanted a letter of agreement from the CEO. Went with a paid DV certificate since that was too much effort. Now, after the whole WoSign controversy I'd be reluctant to ever use their services again, but I just wanted to point out that I was a happy user and later customer (I paid for wildcard certs) for years without any issues.
    - creshal 10y ago
      > I requested a certificate for a company website and they wanted a letter of agreement from the CEO. Went with a paid DV certificate since that was too much effort. Just should've kept pestering him, I ended up paying twice the regular fee and were allowed to print as many class 2 "verified" certificates as we wanted to. By their own ToS we shouldn't even have been class 1 verified, as a whole team of admins was "impersonating" our CEO for years.
tajen 10y ago
Someone asked 2 days ago how customers could be careful about their CA being revoked: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12391308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12391308 > How? I've got no way to judge the security / responsibility of any CA. (...) You can't blame the CA customers for this. To which I answered: > One sign is that if Symantec has issued rogue certificates, and Google publishes the problem, then it's time to leave. I'd say it's valid for StartSSL now as well...
bloopletech 10y ago
I have just read through the mailing list thread referenced in the article, and with the important caveat that I am not an expert in this space, it seems that WoSign has failed to comply with the basic requirements a CA has to meet to be trusted by the major browsers. And compounding these failures, Richard Wang (apparently the managing director of WoSign) either doesn't grasp, or is intentionally trying to minimise the severity of the failures. Compounding the situation more, it seems that WoSign may have acquired StartCom. If true, this seems to be a much larger story, because of the (probable but not yet proven) concern that any failures WoSign is exhibiting, StartCom will exhibit too. Also Richard Wang seems to want to keep the nature of the relationship between WoSign and StartCom as vague and secret as possible. This is concerning because, in the case of CAs in particular, if they haven't done anything wrong, why are they trying to hide it? The other thing I didn't realise until I read the thread is that this situation seems to be currently unfolding - there are posts on the thread from Richard Wang dated September 2nd.

by creshal 10y ago

onli 10y ago

The whole CA system should be abolished. The only thing needed is certificates for domain control, as LE does. We need one or two non-profit organizations for that who do that work transparently. Remove the market from where should be none.

thesimon 10y ago
>The only thing needed is certificates for domain control, as LE does EV certs are quite useful for special sites like banking though.
- creshal 10y ago
  Why? As long as there's a single rogue CA that lets people print EV certs without due diligence, the whole system is a farce.
  - verroq 10y ago
    Not with CT and pinning.
    - mjevans 10y ago
      At that point why have EV instead of actually doing real security and prompting the user to verify the certificate (and remembering what they approved)?
      - thesimon 10y ago
        I don't think my mother knows how to verify the certificate and certificate chain.
        Kadin 10y ago
        Unless your mother knows not to go to a site without an EV certificate, it doesn't really matter that much. The certificate pinning is valuable in terms of preventing MITMs by rogue CAs, but the EV itself doesn't seem to really add much.
        stephenr 10y ago
        > Unless your mother knows not to go to a site without an EV certificate "Make sure it says <company name> in green at the top" is much easier than "ok now check any intermediary certs, and of course make sure they have the right fingerprint"
Arnt 10y ago
What we have is DANE and 0 nonprofits. Instead you add RRs in the domain (which you control, right?).
- drdaeman 10y ago
  > domain (which you control, right?) You never control a domain - ICANN, your TLD registry and your immediate domain registrar do. So, technically, it's just replacing one trust vector with another. However, given that we don't have a proper crypto in DNS (not even DNSSEC which many don't like and urge to abolish), it would be terrible. Anyone who can feed you spoofed DNS responses (i.e. starting from a cafe hotspot) would be able to impersonate just anything.
  - okket 10y ago
    > You never control a domain Then don't use DNS if you can't trust it? You have to trust at some point. Or create your own infrastructure and convince others to trust you, if you want more than a private network. > Anyone who can feed you spoofed DNS responses The tendency goes towards running your own local DNS resolver. It was not possible in the 90s, but since then both the network and computer got a lot faster and smarter. DNSSEC has also evolved quite a bit and is the best we will get for long time. I really encourage to have a look again before dismissing it outright. http://blog.easydns.org/2015/08/06/for-dnssec/ http://blog.easydns.org/2015/08/06/for-dnssec/
    - drdaeman 10y ago
      > Then don't use DNS if you can't trust it? Same with CAs, but I believe it's easier to distrust a rogue CA than a rogue name registry. I mean, if there's a news that some .example TLD is in bed with NSA, Chinese government and Russian FSB - there isn't much we can do about that, isn't it? And I guess most businesses won't go as far as changing their domain name. At the same time, on most devices I saw, distrusting a CA wasn't terribly complicated. And can be done by a browser or OS vendor, with a version upgrade, as well. > http://blog.easydns.org/2015/08/06/for-dnssec/ http://blog.easydns.org/2015/08/06/for-dnssec/ Thanks for the link. Looks like an interesting reading.

lima 10y ago

Yet, StartCom's free certificates were the reason my sites have had SSL certificates for years.

NoGravitas 10y ago
I moved my personal site from StartSSL (which I had used for years) to Let's Encrypt a few months ago. It was really painless, and I recommend it.
creshal 10y ago
Not that positive if StartCom also gave others free certificates for your sites.
- lima 10y ago
  My experience with StartCom was that they were incredibly responsive (Eddy himself answered some of my customer support tickets, sometimes within 20 minutes late at night) and they manually checked every single certificate request and even refused one. I requested a certificate for a company website and they wanted a letter of agreement from the CEO. Went with a paid DV certificate since that was too much effort. Now, after the whole WoSign controversy I'd be reluctant to ever use their services again, but I just wanted to point out that I was a happy user and later customer (I paid for wildcard certs) for years without any issues.
  - creshal 10y ago
    > I requested a certificate for a company website and they wanted a letter of agreement from the CEO. Went with a paid DV certificate since that was too much effort. Just should've kept pestering him, I ended up paying twice the regular fee and were allowed to print as many class 2 "verified" certificates as we wanted to. By their own ToS we shouldn't even have been class 1 verified, as a whole team of admins was "impersonating" our CEO for years.

tajen 10y ago

Someone asked 2 days ago how customers could be careful about their CA being revoked: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12391308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12391308 > How? I've got no way to judge the security / responsibility of any CA. (...) You can't blame the CA customers for this. To which I answered: > One sign is that if Symantec has issued rogue certificates, and Google publishes the problem, then it's time to leave. I'd say it's valid for StartSSL now as well...

bloopletech 10y ago

I have just read through the mailing list thread referenced in the article, and with the important caveat that I am not an expert in this space, it seems that WoSign has failed to comply with the basic requirements a CA has to meet to be trusted by the major browsers. And compounding these failures, Richard Wang (apparently the managing director of WoSign) either doesn't grasp, or is intentionally trying to minimise the severity of the failures. Compounding the situation more, it seems that WoSign may have acquired StartCom. If true, this seems to be a much larger story, because of the (probable but not yet proven) concern that any failures WoSign is exhibiting, StartCom will exhibit too. Also Richard Wang seems to want to keep the nature of the relationship between WoSign and StartCom as vague and secret as possible. This is concerning because, in the case of CAs in particular, if they haven't done anything wrong, why are they trying to hide it? The other thing I didn't realise until I read the thread is that this situation seems to be currently unfolding - there are posts on the thread from Richard Wang dated September 2nd.