3 ms·
> the issuer [...] are saying that they can't guarantee that they will still be the only person with the secret key after that point. It's not quite clear what
by wool_gather 7y ago
> the issuer [...] are saying that they can't guarantee that they will still be the only person with the secret key after that point.
It's not quite clear what you mean here.
The issuer should never have the private key for the end-entity cert (the one representing the domain or whatever). Only the owner should have the private key.
EDIT: Hmm, according to another comment here, some CAs will offer to generate both halves of the keypair for the end user. Yikes.
If you are talking about the CA's own private key...if that ever leaks, then no certificates signed by it should ever be trusted again; expiration date has no relevance here.
- tgv 7y agoThe latter did already happen: Diginotar, in 2011. The Dutch government tried to restrain browser makers from revoking Diginotar's certificates, since many of their websites and services used them. It's a good thing certificates don't have an eternal life span.
- tialaramex 7y ago> EDIT: Hmm, according to another comment here, some CAs will offer to generate both halves of the keypair for the end user. Yikes. I wasn't able to find this comment, but perhaps I didn't look hard enough? EDIT: Wait, I think I found it. I will reply there. In the Web PKI this is prohibited but there are or at least were resellers who'd offer this service to their customers. You should not use this service of course, and some CAs have pledged to tell their resellers not to offer it. In S/MIME it's more common because often the end user is both technically unsophisticated and not given real control over their client in order to mint their own keys anyway. But S/MIME is... probably not important, certainly it isn't what Apple's change is about.