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> such as more diligence by free certificate authorities -- the crux of the talk was rekeying at up to 20x per week enabling the attack You are wrong if you th

by agwa 10y ago

> such as more diligence by free certificate authorities -- the crux of the talk was rekeying at up to 20x per week enabling the attack You are wrong if you think this is the crux of the attack. Let's Encrypt is unique in rate limiting issuance to 20 a week. Other CAs will happily give you unlimited reissues once you pay a small amount for the initial cert (e.g. $15), and they have an API for it too!

eganist 10y ago
Well aware, but not having to pay for it makes it more widely accessible. Any nation-state attacker or attacker with the will to also compromise an identity or two will have no problems either compromising a CA or swiping an owned credit card respectively, but will either of these actors really go out of their way to ransom a site for up to a five figure sum? The former has no incentive to make money, and the latter makes money through identity theft as-is. For what it's worth, we're aware of rapid rekeying with other CAs because Cyph uses rapid key rotation with DigiCert right now and has since before Let's Encrypt entered open beta.
- agwa 10y ago
  > Well aware, but not having to pay for it makes it more widely accessible. Any nation-state attacker or attacker with the will to also compromise an identity or two will have no problems either compromising a CA or swiping an owned credit card respectively, but will either of these actors really go out of their way to ransom a site for up to a five figure sum? The former has no incentive to make money, and the latter makes money through identity theft as-is. These CAs have resellers that sell certs anonymously, accepting Bitcoin as payment. If the upside is a five-figure sum, $15 is nothing. > For what it's worth, we're aware of rapid rekeying with other CAs because Cyph uses rapid key rotation with DigiCert right now and has since before Let's Encrypt entered open beta. Odd then that you mentioned Let's Encrypt 5 times in your Chrome security report (and reported this to the Let's Encrypt security team, as if it's their problem), but didn't mention DigiCert once: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=620776 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=620776
  - eganist 10y ago
    > Odd then that you mentioned Let's Encrypt 5 times in your Chrome security report (and reported this to the Let's Encrypt security team, as if it's their problem), but didn't mention DigiCert once: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=620776 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=620776 It's not odd when you consider the point I'm re-quoting below (which isn't really negated by Bitcoin reselling since Bitcoin anonymization is non-trivial and since it still requires payment): > Well aware, but not having to pay for it makes it more widely accessible. As you noted, the bug report is readily accessible for anyone to view, and it entirely supports the quoted assertion above. In the end, we'd rather draw attention to the free CAs and HPKP-supporting user agents first and foremost in hopes of locking down the problem where it's most conveniently exploited because it is their problem, at least in our eyes. We can tackle the resellers later, and the entire problem of the broken CA model thereafter. Hopefully that satisfies you. Edit: shot you an email. Something from your tone strikes me as this being a personal matter for you. Our goal here isn't to antagonize anyone, just to make sure we've done our due diligence in disclosing the issue to those on the path of least resistance for attackers.

by agwa 10y ago

eganist 10y ago

Well aware, but not having to pay for it makes it more widely accessible. Any nation-state attacker or attacker with the will to also compromise an identity or two will have no problems either compromising a CA or swiping an owned credit card respectively, but will either of these actors really go out of their way to ransom a site for up to a five figure sum? The former has no incentive to make money, and the latter makes money through identity theft as-is. For what it's worth, we're aware of rapid rekeying with other CAs because Cyph uses rapid key rotation with DigiCert right now and has since before Let's Encrypt entered open beta.

agwa 10y ago
> Well aware, but not having to pay for it makes it more widely accessible. Any nation-state attacker or attacker with the will to also compromise an identity or two will have no problems either compromising a CA or swiping an owned credit card respectively, but will either of these actors really go out of their way to ransom a site for up to a five figure sum? The former has no incentive to make money, and the latter makes money through identity theft as-is. These CAs have resellers that sell certs anonymously, accepting Bitcoin as payment. If the upside is a five-figure sum, $15 is nothing. > For what it's worth, we're aware of rapid rekeying with other CAs because Cyph uses rapid key rotation with DigiCert right now and has since before Let's Encrypt entered open beta. Odd then that you mentioned Let's Encrypt 5 times in your Chrome security report (and reported this to the Let's Encrypt security team, as if it's their problem), but didn't mention DigiCert once: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=620776 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=620776
- eganist 10y ago
  > Odd then that you mentioned Let's Encrypt 5 times in your Chrome security report (and reported this to the Let's Encrypt security team, as if it's their problem), but didn't mention DigiCert once: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=620776 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=620776 It's not odd when you consider the point I'm re-quoting below (which isn't really negated by Bitcoin reselling since Bitcoin anonymization is non-trivial and since it still requires payment): > Well aware, but not having to pay for it makes it more widely accessible. As you noted, the bug report is readily accessible for anyone to view, and it entirely supports the quoted assertion above. In the end, we'd rather draw attention to the free CAs and HPKP-supporting user agents first and foremost in hopes of locking down the problem where it's most conveniently exploited because it is their problem, at least in our eyes. We can tackle the resellers later, and the entire problem of the broken CA model thereafter. Hopefully that satisfies you. Edit: shot you an email. Something from your tone strikes me as this being a personal matter for you. Our goal here isn't to antagonize anyone, just to make sure we've done our due diligence in disclosing the issue to those on the path of least resistance for attackers.