25 ms·

Extended Validation Certificates Are Dead

186 points by jcurbo 8y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
I may be different, but to me it seems that EV certificates are useful for dealing with domain typo fishing. Google.com is pretty short and memorable. However, when I type my bank's address, especially if it is a small bank, seeing the EV certificate gives my more confidence that I did not make a typo in the URL. Given that LetsEncrypt makes if free and painless to set up https if you have control of a domain, the EV certificate just gives me just a little bit more comfort over a DV especially for sensitive information.
- gruez 8y ago
  >seeing the EV certificate gives my more confidence that I did not make a typo in the URL not really. there's nothing preventing an attacker from creating a legal entity with the same name and legitimately getting a EV certificate. https://stripe.ian.sh/ https://stripe.ian.sh/
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    This is a much easier problem to deal with than trying to make any other strategy useful. The requirements to get an EV certificate can and should be updated, but it's the closest thing HTTPS does to being a useful security measure. The reality is that good security doesn't scale. If an entity starts specifying a reasonable list of certificates it has directly verified are the trustworthy well-known entities people expect, you have a good trust system. Once you start throwing in an automatically-verifiable system where everyone should be able to participate, phishing is going to happen. As much as Let's Encrypt helped encrypt the web for free, it also guaranteed that convincingly phishing the web is also free. Making a legal entity and going through the EV process is a level of frustration that isn't easy to handle repeatedly, and very few checks would be needed to be added to EV to make it near impossible for an entity to rebrand and reappear after being banned for misusing it's certificate. Notice that stripe.ian.sh doesn't actually have an EV cert anymore: A system working as designed. The only way we are going to ever ensure your bank site can't be imitated by some kid in their garage is going to be to create a system that a kid in their garage can't participate in. And the closest thing to that is EV.
    - owenmarshall 8y ago
      > Notice that stripe.ian.sh doesn't actually have an EV cert anymore: A system working as designed. Comodo has apologized for incorrectly revoking the certificate for stripe.ian.sh and offered a new EV cert. https://www.comodoca.com/en-us/about/blog/on-comodo-ca’s-recent-revocation-of-an-ssl-certifi/ https://www.comodoca.com/en-us/about/blog/on-comodo-ca’s-rec... In fact, many browser security developers would disagree with your assessment: https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/mozilla.dev.security.policy/NjMmyA6MxN0 https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/mozilla.dev.securi...
      - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
        I have very little faith in the opinions of "browser security developers" at the moment on account of browser security being a joke. Their focus has been on technical security but lacks practical security. Yes, stripe.ian.sh exists, but have you ever seen a truly malicious use of EV? Browser security developers concern themselves with arcane exploits of sandboxes while they don't mind nearly that every browser extension has full read/write access to everything people see and do. EV has flaws, but it's better than literally anything else. We shouldn't be promoting HTTPS if it isn't solving this, the other problems it attempts to solve are mostly overstated problems. Because phishing is a vastly bigger threat than MITM. EV has theoretical flaws but solves real problems, HTTPS without it has real problems and largely solves theoretical flaws.
        iancarroll 8y ago
        Frankly, I have yet to see a typical user point out EV as a problem solver. Usually, when I try to explain my work with EV to an average user, nobody knows what I'm talking about.
        ocdtrekkie 8y ago
        I would argue that's because the companies that should be using EV aren't, so users don't see EV often/enough. Google, Microsoft, etc. have no excuse to not be using, and emphasizing EV certificates. Consider how many "Microsoft support" scams would fall flat on their face if people were taught to look for the company they're dealing with was in a green box near the URL, and EV certs were shored up so that only major Fortune 500 or so companies were able to participate. And before someone suggests that users can't be taught this, there's precedent: We've been trying to teach users not to trust that "Secure" badge/lock icon they've gotten used to. The difference is, the secure icon never represented that they were communicating with someone trustworthy, but the EV designation would. EDIT: Also, hi Ian! stripe.ian.sh makes you a minor celebrity, and I'm honored by your presence. ;)
  - nailer 8y ago
    That's obviously specific to the US, but more to the point: they (Digicert) are looking at moving EV to trademarks which is nationally registered and a better match for 'verified brand'
zwetan 8y ago
next: code signing certificates under Windows a lot of B.S. there too
- _nalply 8y ago
  Yes. Two years ago I bought EV for code signing to avoid Microsoft Smartscreen. The whole experience left a stale impression: we were then in the process of switching to non-profit and already dissolved the for-profit company but got the EV for the old company anyway! Clearly the CAs have a moral hazard: if they check too thoroughly they will sell less certificates, so it is not in their interest. In my case they blatantly asked me to provide bullshit evidence for the dissolved company! No wonder that Microsoft Smartscreen doesn't seem to treat EV certificates as all encompassing truth of existence of something. We had to jump through some more hoops to satisfy Smartscreen, the certificate alone was not enough.
wbond 8y ago
Google seems intent on creating a more confusing UX in regards to EV certs as EV looks more similar to Non Secure than secure sites in Chrome 69. For now this has given me the impetus to ditch Chrome. All of the other major desktop browsers still provide useful UI for EV certs. I’m less inclined to deal with finances on mobile through a website anyway, as every financial org I’ve had to deal with has an app, and Apple ends up being the gatekeeper in that realm. Hopefully there will be some sort of push for useful additions to certificate security coming out of Google, as right now they seem more determined to just be undermining things.
- tptacek 8y ago
  That is an interesting way to describe the most effective mover in all of TLS security. No company has done more to improve it. We owe to Google, in at least a substantial way, if not always entirely: * The dis-trusting of basically every skeezy dis-trusted CA. * The adoption of TLS 1.3. * Certificate pinning. * HSTS preloading. * The modernization of OpenSSL. * The Heartbleed attack that prompted the modernization of OpenSSL. * Certificate transparency. I'm rattling these off my head and certainly forgetting something. Obviously, if you broaden the question to everything relevant to browser security, the list gets much longer.
  - wbond 8y ago
    Your list seems focused on behind-the-scenes TLS implementation details. I have no doubt Google has contributed positively in that regard. Personally, I've found their handling of the Symantec root distrust mediocre (from the perspective of an affected site owner). However, the biggest issue is the changes to the display of certificate info in Chrome 69. To present a certificate with an authenticate legal entity the same as an insecure site indicates we have different priorities, and they no longer align.
    - dagenix 8y ago
      That isn't true. Unencrypted sites show up as "Not Secure" which is different from how encrypted sites show up.
niftich 8y ago
It's got more credence coming out of Troy's mouth than, say, a random commenter's like mine, his somewhat bit too scathing snark notwithstanding, but on the "stripe.ian.sh" thread a few months ago I observed [1] that EV, or rather, people's mental model of the trust that EV confers is broken. People typically care about whether the site they arrived at was the one they were intending to visit, which the computer can't possibly know without additional input, but EV has attained a role of serving as a flawed signal of such, because the browser bar said something that doesn't look alarmingly different. What we're seeing now is the convergence of forces that are pushing short-lived, automatic DV certs and players who are keen on de-emphasizing EV's imperfect role as a destination surety signal. Big sites can get by with DV because people trust big sites by fiat, just by mental associations they already have to a URL. There's no benefit to Facebook having an EV cert, because literally everyone who'd want to visit Facebook knows Facebook's URL. User error about entering credentials on the wrong site -- accidentally due to typosquatting, or through leading such as phishing -- is better mitigated in other ways: multi-factor authentication (especially unproxiable such as U2F); not by making the high-profile site pay thousands of dollars for a text string in green, when there's users who fall victim to phishing from bizarre domains too. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15904513#15909273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15904513#15909273
- CaptainZapp 8y ago
  It's got more credence coming out of Troy's mouth than, say, a random commenter's like mine, his somewhat bit too scathing snark notwithstanding If a CA flogs a guarantee for very expensive certs, but fails to explain what it entails. Then bloviates about nerds on the twitter account of the CEO to then block Troy (who, once again, asked a super legitimate question) then they not only deserve all the snark slung into their general direction. No, they deserve to fucking die!
jiveturkey 8y ago
no need to RTFA! EV certs were nonsense from the start.
tgsovlerkhgsel 8y ago
EV is very useful when banks decide to host some parts of their online presence on what sounds like a phishing domain. Think "onlinewebconnect.com", which redirects through "live.logonvalidation.net" (Saxo Bank - they're hip enough to have their own TLD but apparently not smart enough to actually use it for something good) or the various domains banks liked to use for their "3D secure" login process. It also drives the cost of phishing attacks up significantly. Sure, you can get a confusing cert issued, but if it requires you to create a new company, it's not going to be used in mass phishing attacks.
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  Extended validation isn't very useful, for exactly the reasons the article explained. Most users don't take advantage of its benefits no matter how technically sound the concept is. Providing users with anti-phishing and phishing-detection tools doesn't mitigate phishing. The way to mitigate phishing isn't to empower the user with sophisticated awareness, it's to eliminate the need for that awareness.
  - themihai 8y ago
    Ok so we just removed the "sophisticated awareness" and now we wait for a fantasy/unknown solution. No brainer, right? To me this looks like a bad day for the open internet and a good day for walled gardens(i.e. Apple Store).
    - throwawaymath 8y ago
      How exactly did you get from the inefficacy of extended validation certificates (and their subsequent obsolescence) to solidfying moats for walled gardens?
      - snowwrestler 8y ago
        The original purpose of an EV cert is to provide a browser UI that tells a first-time visitor that they can trust the website they've landed on. This is a separate goal from TLS in general, which is just supposed to secure the traffic in transit. Google in particular has no interest in providing such a browser UI. They want users to use Google Search to establish trust instead. "If you're not sure, Google the business name" is common advice to avoid copycat sites. Boy is that a good position for Google to be in! Why would they invest in an alternate solution with a distributed architecture and client-side UI? Almost all the "best practice" security advice today is centered around protecting existing relationships with sites. "Use a strong password, a password manager, and two-factor-authentication" does nothing to protect a first-time site visitor from a scams. It makes sense for security professionals to focus on the lowest hanging fruit, but the result is web in which first time site visits are perilous and uses get no help at all with that.
BillinghamJ 8y ago
EV certs are a useful as a barrier-to-entry when you do cert pinning against roots/intermediates.
- dagenix 8y ago
  Except that HPKP is being deprecated by Chrome (https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!msg/blink-dev/he9tr7p3rZ8/eNMwKPmUBAAJ?hn https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!msg/blink-d...). And I'd suspect other browsers will follow.
  - sandij 8y ago
    When pinning CAs instead of certificates, you’d use CAA instead of HPKP.
    - BillinghamJ 8y ago
      That wouldn’t work, as there’s no differentiator between EV and non-EV
    - toast0 8y ago
      CAA isn't restricting acceptance of certs, it's restricting issuance, assuming the attempted issuer is compliant, competent, and that your domain didn't get hijacked.
  - BillinghamJ 8y ago
    I don’t mean website pinning. I mean eg apps etc
- markonen 8y ago
  We're also using an EV cert for pinning in our native apps (in other words, we're not pinning a public key or a CA, but the fact that the certificate is an EV cert), on the theory that this is less risky operationally than pinning any specific details of an actual certificate. We can get a new certificate from a bunch of CAs, but it's tricky for an attacker to get one for our domain name. (no need to reply to this with stripe.ian.sh) However, now that EV certs are clearly going the way of the dodo, the risks associated with them are likely to increase. CAs are going to be exiting the EV business (and/or going out of business themselves). The dwindling market is also likely to increase the price of an EV cert, rather than decrease it, as remaining purchasers will have a specific need to use an EV cert. It might be time to re-evaluate.
Buge 8y ago
I get that it's unreasonable to expect users to distinguish EV from DV certs. But a machine should be able to distinguish. There should be an Expect-EV pin header, just like HSTS and Expect-CT. That way you can be sure the certificate wasn't issued via DNS hijacking.
- nailer 8y ago
  We have UI that distinguishes verified accounts from non verified accounts in almkat every current communications system. And yes, machines can distinguish EV, there's an OID (field) if every EV cert for it.
  - Buge 8y ago
    A machine that just distinguishes it then does nothing is useless. I want the browser to enforce it. EV doesn't have the user distinction benefit of a blue checkmark if no major websites use it. No one notices EV. Twitter randomly switches between EV and non-EV, but no one gets worried.
    - nailer 8y ago
      You could feasibly (as of recent Mozilla builds) have the browser warn on POST requests to non-verified sites, but it requires verification to get more popular. Any system starts from no usage, and no education and works up - every bank, payment and fintech company is a pretty good start. Browser security indicators resembling more common verification indicators would help.
      - Buge 8y ago
        Do you have a source for the POST thing? I can't find anything by searching. Yeah, I agree EV has some potential for users to distinguish. If we add mechanical way for the browsers to enforce it, that could help increase website adoption, and thus also help users to notice it more.
- ubernostrum 8y ago
ggm 8y ago
They were pretty silly in the first place. All it did was emphasise what a giant scam the CA business is: either all certificates have undergone meaningful validation, or none have, having higher and lower grades is .. broken.
- snowwrestler 8y ago
  The purpose of an EV cert was to provide the user with trust that the company running the site is a legitimate business. That is different from the purpose of TLS in general, which is simply to secure traffic over the wire. That's why they are different products. The use case for EV is hard, and CAs did not always deliver on the goal. But instead of working on that hard problem of trust on first visit, most security professionals have decided to ignore that problem and pretend that all certs have ever needed to do is secure the wire. Of course EV certs look silly under that line of thinking, but that doesn't mean it's right or complete. The industry has basically given up on the idea that there is some way to establish trust on first visit. Which is nuts, because we take it for granted in real life that we can just walk into a brick and mortar store and conduct business without getting mugged.
  - ubernostrum 8y ago
    most security professionals have decided to ignore that problem and pretend that all certs have ever needed to do is secure the wire If you want to blame someone, blame the original designers of the current system, who decided certificates had to be a one-size-fits-all solution for both encryption and identity. Also, blame the years and years and years during which people on sites like HN condescendingly insisted that identity was the important part of TLS/SSL, and who more or less said you'd be better off unencrypted than encrypted without ultra-mega-hyper-octuple-verified identity. The industry has basically given up on the idea that there is some way to establish trust on first visit. Which is nuts, because we take it for granted in real life that we can just walk into a brick and mortar store and conduct business without getting mugged. In real life it's difficult and expensive for me to rent a brick-and-mortar storefront, cover it with the branding and logos of a trusted company, stock it with real-looking products and employees in uniforms, etc. On the web, it takes five minutes and costs little or no money to produce a good-enough imitation of a trusted company's site. Any attempt to analogize between them will fail because of how much lower the barrier is online. Any attempt to say that it's easy in real life, so it ought to be easy online is based on missing this fundamental fact. Also, we live in an age where it's profitable to cold-call people on the phone and say "I'm the tax authority and you owe money, buy $500 worth of iTunes gift cards and send them to this address", and where the majority of calls that come to my phone use spoofed caller ID to try to scam me. "Trust on first visit" is really a monstrously hard problem, and I think you're underestimating that.
technion 8y ago
I'm seeing a lot of discussions about financial and specifically banking sites here. For the average user, there's no reason or need to phish a particular financial site. One of our engagements sent users to a site we just made up, and asked for user credentials for a site they had never heard of in order to access cat videos. In most cases, we were given valid domain credentials. I'd bet money a high percentage of those were also banking credentials. What good would an EV cert at the bank do for this?
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  It wouldn't do anything, because users don't check it. I used to be involved in phishing campaigns against internal employees at a fintech company. Despite these employees being highly technical people, I can't recall incorrect or missing extended validation certificates ever stopping them from submitting credentials. As another commenter has said, I can't personally tell you the name of any specific website with an EV certificate. I don't know any friends or family who actually check for the presence of correct EV certificates. It's a cool idea and it's made CAs plenty of money, but it's just too subtle of a cue. I think many people are resistant to the idea that extended validation certificates aren't effective for one or both of two reasons. First, they probably want to actually do something instead of being hopeless, so they consider doing something better than nothing even if it's not ideal. Second, they are reviewing the technical specification and finding it sound, but not grounding it in the reality of how users work. Part of the argument against them is not just that they're ineffective, but also expensive. It's not unreasonable to simply call it snake oil. The visual cue would need to be significantly more prominent - up to par with the red versus green icons of HTTP and HTTPS, respectively - in order to have a real impact. Users would need to have better training and education to come to expect the extended validation instead of merely feeling more assurance when it's present. The system has insufficient penalty for sites which should have extended validation but only present domain validation, and browser-buyin to the concept is fading.
  - wbond 8y ago
    > First, they probably want to actually do something instead of being hopeless, so they consider doing something better than nothing even if it's not ideal. Right, once OV and EV certificates are effectively removed from browsers, users such as myself will no longer have any tool to help ensure we are interacting with the entity intend to be interacting with. It is kind of like getting a cold call from your credit card company saying their has been suspicious activity and they want me to authenticate my account with personal details. I always call the phone number on the back of my physical credit card to ensure someone isn't scamming me. Rather than removing EV certificates as a concept, I would love to see some experiments run by browser vendors to see how users can more readily understand who they are interacting with. But instead, the solution seems to be to get rid of the only option since it doesn't work in its current incarnation. > Part of the argument against them is not just that they're ineffective, but also expensive. It's not unreasonable to simply call it snake oil. I have a hard time understanding this argument. You can purchase an EV cert for $80 a year from NameCheap. The extra cost is because they have people verify that the company details you have provided are valid and that you are an authorized representative of the company. Any company that is more than a solo founder is going to be in dire straights if $80 a year is too much. I mean, are you even going to find a domain name and hosting for less than $80 a year? In reality though, I don't think much of anyone other than major email providers and financial institutions really need to worry about EV. If a website doesn't have EV, but uses PayPal, I have no qualms. But if I go to long into Fidelity or PayPal and they couldn't be bothered to spent $100 per year to help me ensure I am actually interacting with them, that says a lot to me. I mean, even my small town NH bank has an EV cert. It just makes sense if you are dealing with finances.
cm2187 8y ago
I actually kind of agree that EV certificate inspire more confidence when buying something on a dodgy website that you never heard about. But for that one needs to be tech savvy enough to even recognize what an EV certificate is and how it is different from a DV cert, and I am sure that even most developers aren't sure exactly, let alone the wider population. So I doubt it gives much benefit to any website.
- snowwrestler 8y ago
  If only there was some common, easily visible browser UI element that told users when an EV cert was present, so they didn't have to understand the differences between certs.
themihai 8y ago
I actually found EV useful especially when logging in financial websites. Of course most people can't make the difference between http and https but I thought this issue will only be fixed by time.
- Ixio 8y ago
  That's actually how I found out my Lenovo was doing MITM a few days before the whole Superfish debacle exploded on the net. I went on Bitbucket (I think) and noticed something seemed different, I realised it wasn't showing an EV certificate: I dug deeper and saw that the issuer was suspect. I feel that EV certificates do have their use for high-worth targets (banks and so one). Getting one is not trivial and definitely not scalable. Maybe they are a bit overpriced, maybe the certificate industry is kind of sketchy, but that's other debates.
linsomniac 8y ago
Another way to look at this article is: The browsers are killing EV certs. That seems to be the bulk of the point he's making, EV certs are dead because, especially on Mobile, you can't even tell they are there. He doesn't really, in my mind, support the case that EV certs never were worth anything. I definitely liked to see them when I went to my banks and the like. But I'll admit that I don't remember which ones had them and which didn't, other than that I expected my financial institutions to have them.
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  > But I'll admit that I don't remember which ones had them and which didn't, other than that I expected my financial institutions to have them. This is a core point in the article too that you've glossed over: no one knows which websites must have EV information other than a general "hope my bank has one". EV certificates are useless not just because the browsers are dropping them, the browsers are dropping marks for EV certificates because they are useless for actual security. They were an interesting attempt at security, but like the "take your shoes off at the airport", it only really helped you from maybe blowing up your own foot, tops. Ultimately the only thing that EV certificates were doing was lining the pockets of security theater predators, because despite "reports" they've never really meant anything to the average consumer and most consumers never learned how/where to look for them except sometimes "maybe my bank should have one, I don't know?"
  - l9k 8y ago
    This is worse than that, because no one ever wondered if they should have one. People only notice when it is there.

186 points by jcurbo 8y ago

I may be different, but to me it seems that EV certificates are useful for dealing with domain typo fishing. Google.com is pretty short and memorable. However, when I type my bank's address, especially if it is a small bank, seeing the EV certificate gives my more confidence that I did not make a typo in the URL. Given that LetsEncrypt makes if free and painless to set up https if you have control of a domain, the EV certificate just gives me just a little bit more comfort over a DV especially for sensitive information.

gruez 8y ago
>seeing the EV certificate gives my more confidence that I did not make a typo in the URL not really. there's nothing preventing an attacker from creating a legal entity with the same name and legitimately getting a EV certificate. https://stripe.ian.sh/ https://stripe.ian.sh/
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  This is a much easier problem to deal with than trying to make any other strategy useful. The requirements to get an EV certificate can and should be updated, but it's the closest thing HTTPS does to being a useful security measure. The reality is that good security doesn't scale. If an entity starts specifying a reasonable list of certificates it has directly verified are the trustworthy well-known entities people expect, you have a good trust system. Once you start throwing in an automatically-verifiable system where everyone should be able to participate, phishing is going to happen. As much as Let's Encrypt helped encrypt the web for free, it also guaranteed that convincingly phishing the web is also free. Making a legal entity and going through the EV process is a level of frustration that isn't easy to handle repeatedly, and very few checks would be needed to be added to EV to make it near impossible for an entity to rebrand and reappear after being banned for misusing it's certificate. Notice that stripe.ian.sh doesn't actually have an EV cert anymore: A system working as designed. The only way we are going to ever ensure your bank site can't be imitated by some kid in their garage is going to be to create a system that a kid in their garage can't participate in. And the closest thing to that is EV.
  - owenmarshall 8y ago
    > Notice that stripe.ian.sh doesn't actually have an EV cert anymore: A system working as designed. Comodo has apologized for incorrectly revoking the certificate for stripe.ian.sh and offered a new EV cert. https://www.comodoca.com/en-us/about/blog/on-comodo-ca’s-recent-revocation-of-an-ssl-certifi/ https://www.comodoca.com/en-us/about/blog/on-comodo-ca’s-rec... In fact, many browser security developers would disagree with your assessment: https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/mozilla.dev.security.policy/NjMmyA6MxN0 https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/mozilla.dev.securi...
    - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
      I have very little faith in the opinions of "browser security developers" at the moment on account of browser security being a joke. Their focus has been on technical security but lacks practical security. Yes, stripe.ian.sh exists, but have you ever seen a truly malicious use of EV? Browser security developers concern themselves with arcane exploits of sandboxes while they don't mind nearly that every browser extension has full read/write access to everything people see and do. EV has flaws, but it's better than literally anything else. We shouldn't be promoting HTTPS if it isn't solving this, the other problems it attempts to solve are mostly overstated problems. Because phishing is a vastly bigger threat than MITM. EV has theoretical flaws but solves real problems, HTTPS without it has real problems and largely solves theoretical flaws.
      - iancarroll 8y ago
        Frankly, I have yet to see a typical user point out EV as a problem solver. Usually, when I try to explain my work with EV to an average user, nobody knows what I'm talking about.
        ocdtrekkie 8y ago
        I would argue that's because the companies that should be using EV aren't, so users don't see EV often/enough. Google, Microsoft, etc. have no excuse to not be using, and emphasizing EV certificates. Consider how many "Microsoft support" scams would fall flat on their face if people were taught to look for the company they're dealing with was in a green box near the URL, and EV certs were shored up so that only major Fortune 500 or so companies were able to participate. And before someone suggests that users can't be taught this, there's precedent: We've been trying to teach users not to trust that "Secure" badge/lock icon they've gotten used to. The difference is, the secure icon never represented that they were communicating with someone trustworthy, but the EV designation would. EDIT: Also, hi Ian! stripe.ian.sh makes you a minor celebrity, and I'm honored by your presence. ;)
- nailer 8y ago
  That's obviously specific to the US, but more to the point: they (Digicert) are looking at moving EV to trademarks which is nationally registered and a better match for 'verified brand'

zwetan 8y ago

next: code signing certificates under Windows a lot of B.S. there too

_nalply 8y ago
Yes. Two years ago I bought EV for code signing to avoid Microsoft Smartscreen. The whole experience left a stale impression: we were then in the process of switching to non-profit and already dissolved the for-profit company but got the EV for the old company anyway! Clearly the CAs have a moral hazard: if they check too thoroughly they will sell less certificates, so it is not in their interest. In my case they blatantly asked me to provide bullshit evidence for the dissolved company! No wonder that Microsoft Smartscreen doesn't seem to treat EV certificates as all encompassing truth of existence of something. We had to jump through some more hoops to satisfy Smartscreen, the certificate alone was not enough.

wbond 8y ago

Google seems intent on creating a more confusing UX in regards to EV certs as EV looks more similar to Non Secure than secure sites in Chrome 69. For now this has given me the impetus to ditch Chrome. All of the other major desktop browsers still provide useful UI for EV certs. I’m less inclined to deal with finances on mobile through a website anyway, as every financial org I’ve had to deal with has an app, and Apple ends up being the gatekeeper in that realm. Hopefully there will be some sort of push for useful additions to certificate security coming out of Google, as right now they seem more determined to just be undermining things.

tptacek 8y ago
That is an interesting way to describe the most effective mover in all of TLS security. No company has done more to improve it. We owe to Google, in at least a substantial way, if not always entirely: * The dis-trusting of basically every skeezy dis-trusted CA. * The adoption of TLS 1.3. * Certificate pinning. * HSTS preloading. * The modernization of OpenSSL. * The Heartbleed attack that prompted the modernization of OpenSSL. * Certificate transparency. I'm rattling these off my head and certainly forgetting something. Obviously, if you broaden the question to everything relevant to browser security, the list gets much longer.
- wbond 8y ago
  Your list seems focused on behind-the-scenes TLS implementation details. I have no doubt Google has contributed positively in that regard. Personally, I've found their handling of the Symantec root distrust mediocre (from the perspective of an affected site owner). However, the biggest issue is the changes to the display of certificate info in Chrome 69. To present a certificate with an authenticate legal entity the same as an insecure site indicates we have different priorities, and they no longer align.
  - dagenix 8y ago
    That isn't true. Unencrypted sites show up as "Not Secure" which is different from how encrypted sites show up.

niftich 8y ago

It's got more credence coming out of Troy's mouth than, say, a random commenter's like mine, his somewhat bit too scathing snark notwithstanding, but on the "stripe.ian.sh" thread a few months ago I observed [1] that EV, or rather, people's mental model of the trust that EV confers is broken. People typically care about whether the site they arrived at was the one they were intending to visit, which the computer can't possibly know without additional input, but EV has attained a role of serving as a flawed signal of such, because the browser bar said something that doesn't look alarmingly different. What we're seeing now is the convergence of forces that are pushing short-lived, automatic DV certs and players who are keen on de-emphasizing EV's imperfect role as a destination surety signal. Big sites can get by with DV because people trust big sites by fiat, just by mental associations they already have to a URL. There's no benefit to Facebook having an EV cert, because literally everyone who'd want to visit Facebook knows Facebook's URL. User error about entering credentials on the wrong site -- accidentally due to typosquatting, or through leading such as phishing -- is better mitigated in other ways: multi-factor authentication (especially unproxiable such as U2F); not by making the high-profile site pay thousands of dollars for a text string in green, when there's users who fall victim to phishing from bizarre domains too. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15904513#15909273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15904513#15909273

CaptainZapp 8y ago
It's got more credence coming out of Troy's mouth than, say, a random commenter's like mine, his somewhat bit too scathing snark notwithstanding If a CA flogs a guarantee for very expensive certs, but fails to explain what it entails. Then bloviates about nerds on the twitter account of the CEO to then block Troy (who, once again, asked a super legitimate question) then they not only deserve all the snark slung into their general direction. No, they deserve to fucking die!

jiveturkey 8y ago

no need to RTFA! EV certs were nonsense from the start.

tgsovlerkhgsel 8y ago

EV is very useful when banks decide to host some parts of their online presence on what sounds like a phishing domain. Think "onlinewebconnect.com", which redirects through "live.logonvalidation.net" (Saxo Bank - they're hip enough to have their own TLD but apparently not smart enough to actually use it for something good) or the various domains banks liked to use for their "3D secure" login process. It also drives the cost of phishing attacks up significantly. Sure, you can get a confusing cert issued, but if it requires you to create a new company, it's not going to be used in mass phishing attacks.

throwawaymath 8y ago
Extended validation isn't very useful, for exactly the reasons the article explained. Most users don't take advantage of its benefits no matter how technically sound the concept is. Providing users with anti-phishing and phishing-detection tools doesn't mitigate phishing. The way to mitigate phishing isn't to empower the user with sophisticated awareness, it's to eliminate the need for that awareness.
- themihai 8y ago
  Ok so we just removed the "sophisticated awareness" and now we wait for a fantasy/unknown solution. No brainer, right? To me this looks like a bad day for the open internet and a good day for walled gardens(i.e. Apple Store).
  - throwawaymath 8y ago
    How exactly did you get from the inefficacy of extended validation certificates (and their subsequent obsolescence) to solidfying moats for walled gardens?
    - snowwrestler 8y ago
      The original purpose of an EV cert is to provide a browser UI that tells a first-time visitor that they can trust the website they've landed on. This is a separate goal from TLS in general, which is just supposed to secure the traffic in transit. Google in particular has no interest in providing such a browser UI. They want users to use Google Search to establish trust instead. "If you're not sure, Google the business name" is common advice to avoid copycat sites. Boy is that a good position for Google to be in! Why would they invest in an alternate solution with a distributed architecture and client-side UI? Almost all the "best practice" security advice today is centered around protecting existing relationships with sites. "Use a strong password, a password manager, and two-factor-authentication" does nothing to protect a first-time site visitor from a scams. It makes sense for security professionals to focus on the lowest hanging fruit, but the result is web in which first time site visits are perilous and uses get no help at all with that.

BillinghamJ 8y ago

EV certs are a useful as a barrier-to-entry when you do cert pinning against roots/intermediates.

dagenix 8y ago
Except that HPKP is being deprecated by Chrome (https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!msg/blink-dev/he9tr7p3rZ8/eNMwKPmUBAAJ?hn https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!msg/blink-d...). And I'd suspect other browsers will follow.
- sandij 8y ago
  When pinning CAs instead of certificates, you’d use CAA instead of HPKP.
  - BillinghamJ 8y ago
    That wouldn’t work, as there’s no differentiator between EV and non-EV
  - toast0 8y ago
    CAA isn't restricting acceptance of certs, it's restricting issuance, assuming the attempted issuer is compliant, competent, and that your domain didn't get hijacked.
- BillinghamJ 8y ago
  I don’t mean website pinning. I mean eg apps etc
markonen 8y ago
We're also using an EV cert for pinning in our native apps (in other words, we're not pinning a public key or a CA, but the fact that the certificate is an EV cert), on the theory that this is less risky operationally than pinning any specific details of an actual certificate. We can get a new certificate from a bunch of CAs, but it's tricky for an attacker to get one for our domain name. (no need to reply to this with stripe.ian.sh) However, now that EV certs are clearly going the way of the dodo, the risks associated with them are likely to increase. CAs are going to be exiting the EV business (and/or going out of business themselves). The dwindling market is also likely to increase the price of an EV cert, rather than decrease it, as remaining purchasers will have a specific need to use an EV cert. It might be time to re-evaluate.

Buge 8y ago

I get that it's unreasonable to expect users to distinguish EV from DV certs. But a machine should be able to distinguish. There should be an Expect-EV pin header, just like HSTS and Expect-CT. That way you can be sure the certificate wasn't issued via DNS hijacking.

nailer 8y ago
We have UI that distinguishes verified accounts from non verified accounts in almkat every current communications system. And yes, machines can distinguish EV, there's an OID (field) if every EV cert for it.
- Buge 8y ago
  A machine that just distinguishes it then does nothing is useless. I want the browser to enforce it. EV doesn't have the user distinction benefit of a blue checkmark if no major websites use it. No one notices EV. Twitter randomly switches between EV and non-EV, but no one gets worried.
  - nailer 8y ago
    You could feasibly (as of recent Mozilla builds) have the browser warn on POST requests to non-verified sites, but it requires verification to get more popular. Any system starts from no usage, and no education and works up - every bank, payment and fintech company is a pretty good start. Browser security indicators resembling more common verification indicators would help.
    - Buge 8y ago
      Do you have a source for the POST thing? I can't find anything by searching. Yeah, I agree EV has some potential for users to distinguish. If we add mechanical way for the browsers to enforce it, that could help increase website adoption, and thus also help users to notice it more.
ubernostrum 8y ago

ggm 8y ago

They were pretty silly in the first place. All it did was emphasise what a giant scam the CA business is: either all certificates have undergone meaningful validation, or none have, having higher and lower grades is .. broken.

snowwrestler 8y ago
The purpose of an EV cert was to provide the user with trust that the company running the site is a legitimate business. That is different from the purpose of TLS in general, which is simply to secure traffic over the wire. That's why they are different products. The use case for EV is hard, and CAs did not always deliver on the goal. But instead of working on that hard problem of trust on first visit, most security professionals have decided to ignore that problem and pretend that all certs have ever needed to do is secure the wire. Of course EV certs look silly under that line of thinking, but that doesn't mean it's right or complete. The industry has basically given up on the idea that there is some way to establish trust on first visit. Which is nuts, because we take it for granted in real life that we can just walk into a brick and mortar store and conduct business without getting mugged.
- ubernostrum 8y ago
  most security professionals have decided to ignore that problem and pretend that all certs have ever needed to do is secure the wire If you want to blame someone, blame the original designers of the current system, who decided certificates had to be a one-size-fits-all solution for both encryption and identity. Also, blame the years and years and years during which people on sites like HN condescendingly insisted that identity was the important part of TLS/SSL, and who more or less said you'd be better off unencrypted than encrypted without ultra-mega-hyper-octuple-verified identity. The industry has basically given up on the idea that there is some way to establish trust on first visit. Which is nuts, because we take it for granted in real life that we can just walk into a brick and mortar store and conduct business without getting mugged. In real life it's difficult and expensive for me to rent a brick-and-mortar storefront, cover it with the branding and logos of a trusted company, stock it with real-looking products and employees in uniforms, etc. On the web, it takes five minutes and costs little or no money to produce a good-enough imitation of a trusted company's site. Any attempt to analogize between them will fail because of how much lower the barrier is online. Any attempt to say that it's easy in real life, so it ought to be easy online is based on missing this fundamental fact. Also, we live in an age where it's profitable to cold-call people on the phone and say "I'm the tax authority and you owe money, buy $500 worth of iTunes gift cards and send them to this address", and where the majority of calls that come to my phone use spoofed caller ID to try to scam me. "Trust on first visit" is really a monstrously hard problem, and I think you're underestimating that.

technion 8y ago

I'm seeing a lot of discussions about financial and specifically banking sites here. For the average user, there's no reason or need to phish a particular financial site. One of our engagements sent users to a site we just made up, and asked for user credentials for a site they had never heard of in order to access cat videos. In most cases, we were given valid domain credentials. I'd bet money a high percentage of those were also banking credentials. What good would an EV cert at the bank do for this?

throwawaymath 8y ago
It wouldn't do anything, because users don't check it. I used to be involved in phishing campaigns against internal employees at a fintech company. Despite these employees being highly technical people, I can't recall incorrect or missing extended validation certificates ever stopping them from submitting credentials. As another commenter has said, I can't personally tell you the name of any specific website with an EV certificate. I don't know any friends or family who actually check for the presence of correct EV certificates. It's a cool idea and it's made CAs plenty of money, but it's just too subtle of a cue. I think many people are resistant to the idea that extended validation certificates aren't effective for one or both of two reasons. First, they probably want to actually do something instead of being hopeless, so they consider doing something better than nothing even if it's not ideal. Second, they are reviewing the technical specification and finding it sound, but not grounding it in the reality of how users work. Part of the argument against them is not just that they're ineffective, but also expensive. It's not unreasonable to simply call it snake oil. The visual cue would need to be significantly more prominent - up to par with the red versus green icons of HTTP and HTTPS, respectively - in order to have a real impact. Users would need to have better training and education to come to expect the extended validation instead of merely feeling more assurance when it's present. The system has insufficient penalty for sites which should have extended validation but only present domain validation, and browser-buyin to the concept is fading.
- wbond 8y ago
  > First, they probably want to actually do something instead of being hopeless, so they consider doing something better than nothing even if it's not ideal. Right, once OV and EV certificates are effectively removed from browsers, users such as myself will no longer have any tool to help ensure we are interacting with the entity intend to be interacting with. It is kind of like getting a cold call from your credit card company saying their has been suspicious activity and they want me to authenticate my account with personal details. I always call the phone number on the back of my physical credit card to ensure someone isn't scamming me. Rather than removing EV certificates as a concept, I would love to see some experiments run by browser vendors to see how users can more readily understand who they are interacting with. But instead, the solution seems to be to get rid of the only option since it doesn't work in its current incarnation. > Part of the argument against them is not just that they're ineffective, but also expensive. It's not unreasonable to simply call it snake oil. I have a hard time understanding this argument. You can purchase an EV cert for $80 a year from NameCheap. The extra cost is because they have people verify that the company details you have provided are valid and that you are an authorized representative of the company. Any company that is more than a solo founder is going to be in dire straights if $80 a year is too much. I mean, are you even going to find a domain name and hosting for less than $80 a year? In reality though, I don't think much of anyone other than major email providers and financial institutions really need to worry about EV. If a website doesn't have EV, but uses PayPal, I have no qualms. But if I go to long into Fidelity or PayPal and they couldn't be bothered to spent $100 per year to help me ensure I am actually interacting with them, that says a lot to me. I mean, even my small town NH bank has an EV cert. It just makes sense if you are dealing with finances.

cm2187 8y ago

I actually kind of agree that EV certificate inspire more confidence when buying something on a dodgy website that you never heard about. But for that one needs to be tech savvy enough to even recognize what an EV certificate is and how it is different from a DV cert, and I am sure that even most developers aren't sure exactly, let alone the wider population. So I doubt it gives much benefit to any website.

snowwrestler 8y ago
If only there was some common, easily visible browser UI element that told users when an EV cert was present, so they didn't have to understand the differences between certs.

themihai 8y ago

I actually found EV useful especially when logging in financial websites. Of course most people can't make the difference between http and https but I thought this issue will only be fixed by time.

Ixio 8y ago
That's actually how I found out my Lenovo was doing MITM a few days before the whole Superfish debacle exploded on the net. I went on Bitbucket (I think) and noticed something seemed different, I realised it wasn't showing an EV certificate: I dug deeper and saw that the issuer was suspect. I feel that EV certificates do have their use for high-worth targets (banks and so one). Getting one is not trivial and definitely not scalable. Maybe they are a bit overpriced, maybe the certificate industry is kind of sketchy, but that's other debates.

linsomniac 8y ago

Another way to look at this article is: The browsers are killing EV certs. That seems to be the bulk of the point he's making, EV certs are dead because, especially on Mobile, you can't even tell they are there. He doesn't really, in my mind, support the case that EV certs never were worth anything. I definitely liked to see them when I went to my banks and the like. But I'll admit that I don't remember which ones had them and which didn't, other than that I expected my financial institutions to have them.

WorldMaker 8y ago
> But I'll admit that I don't remember which ones had them and which didn't, other than that I expected my financial institutions to have them. This is a core point in the article too that you've glossed over: no one knows which websites must have EV information other than a general "hope my bank has one". EV certificates are useless not just because the browsers are dropping them, the browsers are dropping marks for EV certificates because they are useless for actual security. They were an interesting attempt at security, but like the "take your shoes off at the airport", it only really helped you from maybe blowing up your own foot, tops. Ultimately the only thing that EV certificates were doing was lining the pockets of security theater predators, because despite "reports" they've never really meant anything to the average consumer and most consumers never learned how/where to look for them except sometimes "maybe my bank should have one, I don't know?"
- l9k 8y ago
  This is worse than that, because no one ever wondered if they should have one. People only notice when it is there.