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If people really listened to Snowden they wouldn't be relying on CA authorities for certificates.

est31 7y ago
There have been fradulent certificates in the wild in the past but the CAs doing it usually get kicked out pretty quickly. That's what Google's certificate transparency project is for. And they are increasing requirements further and further. Hopefully one day we'll get to a state where the infrastructure of multiple independent companies in different countries needs to be compromised in order for one successful forgery. But even now certificate transparency has greatly reduced the number of entities able to forge certificates.
- hcarvalhoalves 7y ago
  State actors.
- maqp 7y ago
  The problems is, companies like VeriSign offer LEA services Quoting https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1591033 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1591033 “Verisign also operates a ‘Lawful Intercept’ service called NetDiscovery. This service is provided to ‘... [assist] government agen- cies with lawful interception and subpoena requests for subscriber records.’ If you now try to search for NetDiscovery or LEA services for CAs, you won't find any, but I guarantee you they haven't disappeared anywhere.
  - tialaramex 7y ago
    The CA doesn't have anything that helps you do Lawful Intercept. They just vouch for people's identities. If you can persuade them to fraudulently vouch for your agency as being some other subscriber then this unavoidably produces a smoking gun which everybody can see, just like when Israel produces fake passports so its agents can travel abroad to murder people. It doesn't let them passively intercept. The CA could not, gun to its head, help you do that. The mathematics just doesn't work that way, any more than the US Federal Reserve could intervene to make three dollars twice as many as five dollars.
  - est31 7y ago
    That paper is from April 2010 which is a different age in terms of internet encryption. Just for comparison, Google only started offering an encrypted version of its service in May 2010: https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/search-more-securely-with-encrypted.html https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/search-more-securely... They quickly realized the problems that you describe. In Nov 2011, the Certificate Transparency project by Google had its initial commit: https://github.com/google/certificate-transparency/commit/6afe823685a7526e0927db90b037c298dfabea95 https://github.com/google/certificate-transparency/commit/6a... In Chrome they have since enforced CT compliance for certificates: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!msg/ct-policy/wHILiYf31DE/iMFmpMEkAQAJ https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!msg/ct-poli... CT requires that each certificate issued needs to be contained in both a Google log and a non-Google log: https://github.com/chromium/ct-policy/blob/master/ct_policy.md https://github.com/chromium/ct-policy/blob/master/ct_policy.... This means that fradulently issued certificates either won't work, or will be contained in public logs run by Google (or Google needs to be forced by authorities as well).
JohnFen 7y ago
I don't consider a cert trustworthy just because it's signed by a CA, unless that CA is mine or one run by someone I personally know and trust. I came to this position before Snowden, though.
- chapium 7y ago
  In the CA model is anything 100% yours? A signed cert has to depend on someone you dont know.
  - taftster 7y ago
    Unless it's self-signed. Presumably you do know yourself well enough?
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > A signed cert has to depend on someone you dont know. No, it doesn't. If it's signed by my own CA, then I clearly know who signed it. Likewise if it's signed by a CA run by someone else I actually know. The point of the signing is to have someone I trust validate that the cert they signed is trustworthy even if I don't know the entity that made the cert they signed.
blotter_paper 7y ago
I feel like Namecoin and Ethereum Name Service are the most promising replacements for certificate authorities that I'm aware of. Are you aware of any better suggestions?

There have been fradulent certificates in the wild in the past but the CAs doing it usually get kicked out pretty quickly. That's what Google's certificate transparency project is for. And they are increasing requirements further and further. Hopefully one day we'll get to a state where the infrastructure of multiple independent companies in different countries needs to be compromised in order for one successful forgery. But even now certificate transparency has greatly reduced the number of entities able to forge certificates.

hcarvalhoalves 7y ago
State actors.
maqp 7y ago
The problems is, companies like VeriSign offer LEA services Quoting https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1591033 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1591033 “Verisign also operates a ‘Lawful Intercept’ service called NetDiscovery. This service is provided to ‘... [assist] government agen- cies with lawful interception and subpoena requests for subscriber records.’ If you now try to search for NetDiscovery or LEA services for CAs, you won't find any, but I guarantee you they haven't disappeared anywhere.
- tialaramex 7y ago
  The CA doesn't have anything that helps you do Lawful Intercept. They just vouch for people's identities. If you can persuade them to fraudulently vouch for your agency as being some other subscriber then this unavoidably produces a smoking gun which everybody can see, just like when Israel produces fake passports so its agents can travel abroad to murder people. It doesn't let them passively intercept. The CA could not, gun to its head, help you do that. The mathematics just doesn't work that way, any more than the US Federal Reserve could intervene to make three dollars twice as many as five dollars.
- est31 7y ago
  That paper is from April 2010 which is a different age in terms of internet encryption. Just for comparison, Google only started offering an encrypted version of its service in May 2010: https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/search-more-securely-with-encrypted.html https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/search-more-securely... They quickly realized the problems that you describe. In Nov 2011, the Certificate Transparency project by Google had its initial commit: https://github.com/google/certificate-transparency/commit/6afe823685a7526e0927db90b037c298dfabea95 https://github.com/google/certificate-transparency/commit/6a... In Chrome they have since enforced CT compliance for certificates: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!msg/ct-policy/wHILiYf31DE/iMFmpMEkAQAJ https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!msg/ct-poli... CT requires that each certificate issued needs to be contained in both a Google log and a non-Google log: https://github.com/chromium/ct-policy/blob/master/ct_policy.md https://github.com/chromium/ct-policy/blob/master/ct_policy.... This means that fradulently issued certificates either won't work, or will be contained in public logs run by Google (or Google needs to be forced by authorities as well).

JohnFen 7y ago

I don't consider a cert trustworthy just because it's signed by a CA, unless that CA is mine or one run by someone I personally know and trust. I came to this position before Snowden, though.

chapium 7y ago
In the CA model is anything 100% yours? A signed cert has to depend on someone you dont know.
- taftster 7y ago
  Unless it's self-signed. Presumably you do know yourself well enough?
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > A signed cert has to depend on someone you dont know. No, it doesn't. If it's signed by my own CA, then I clearly know who signed it. Likewise if it's signed by a CA run by someone else I actually know. The point of the signing is to have someone I trust validate that the cert they signed is trustworthy even if I don't know the entity that made the cert they signed.

blotter_paper 7y ago

I feel like Namecoin and Ethereum Name Service are the most promising replacements for certificate authorities that I'm aware of. Are you aware of any better suggestions?