5 ms·

I helped the authors with a little bit of background info on EPP. Some registries are leaving their management systems open to the internet.

by mike_d 3y ago

8organicbits 3y ago
As a security consultant this boggles my mind. I push companies with much less sensitive systems to use better security practices. It's crazy that these foundational systems lack such controls, but I guess that's due to race to the bottom economic factors?
- markus_zhang 3y ago
  This is probably the "No one cares about security unless something breaks (and then security team gets blamed)" mindset especially in public areas.
- cookiengineer 3y ago
  Wait until you find out where CA certificates come from. The answer is: E-Mail and a public salesforce instance.
  - 8organicbits 3y ago
    You're talking about issuing certificates via email? That's a widely documented process, I've used it. SharePoint... I'm not familiar with. I'd love a reference. Certificate issuance doesn't need to be perfect. We have Certificate Transparency, for example to catch missisuance and CAA records to restrict the process.
    - cookiengineer 3y ago
      I talk about the CCADB: [1] https://www.ccadb.org/ https://www.ccadb.org/ [2] https://www.ccadb.org/resources https://www.ccadb.org/resources
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - 8organicbits 3y ago
        Ah, you're not talking about issuance. I think you're implying that the browsers blindly copy their trust roots from the linked Salesforce site, and you don't think Salesforce provides suitable tampering protection. I'm not shocked? The website discusses audit responsibilities quite a bit, which seems like it mitigates tampering concerns. Sure I'd prefer something other than Salesforce too, but I'm not seeing a glaring issue here.
  - taskforcegemini 3y ago
    can you elaborate on that? Certificates are usually public anyway, but the matching private keys aren't. CAs usually have them on hsm-devices only. if you mean private keys are shared via email: keys from the CA-Certs, or just from the Certificates the CA signed? for instance, getting a CA publicly into a browser is expensive and requires audits, so your experience makes me curious
- mike_d 3y ago
  Most of these are small ccTLDs with minimal management. For most countries they just kind of got assigned a TLD and some random person in the telecommunications department of the government, the postal office, or a university has been keeping it going for years. I recently tried reporting a security issue to a ccTLD. As a registrar thankfully I was able to reach out to ICANN for assistance, but even then the person who operated the TLD had just retired and there was no replacement.

I helped the authors with a little bit of background info on EPP. Some registries are leaving their management systems open to the internet.

by mike_d 3y ago

I helped the authors with a little bit of background info on EPP. Some registries are leaving their management systems open to the internet.

8organicbits 3y ago

As a security consultant this boggles my mind. I push companies with much less sensitive systems to use better security practices. It's crazy that these foundational systems lack such controls, but I guess that's due to race to the bottom economic factors?

markus_zhang 3y ago
This is probably the "No one cares about security unless something breaks (and then security team gets blamed)" mindset especially in public areas.
cookiengineer 3y ago
Wait until you find out where CA certificates come from. The answer is: E-Mail and a public salesforce instance.
- 8organicbits 3y ago
  You're talking about issuing certificates via email? That's a widely documented process, I've used it. SharePoint... I'm not familiar with. I'd love a reference. Certificate issuance doesn't need to be perfect. We have Certificate Transparency, for example to catch missisuance and CAA records to restrict the process.
  - cookiengineer 3y ago
    I talk about the CCADB: [1] https://www.ccadb.org/ https://www.ccadb.org/ [2] https://www.ccadb.org/resources https://www.ccadb.org/resources
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - 8organicbits 3y ago
      Ah, you're not talking about issuance. I think you're implying that the browsers blindly copy their trust roots from the linked Salesforce site, and you don't think Salesforce provides suitable tampering protection. I'm not shocked? The website discusses audit responsibilities quite a bit, which seems like it mitigates tampering concerns. Sure I'd prefer something other than Salesforce too, but I'm not seeing a glaring issue here.
- taskforcegemini 3y ago
  can you elaborate on that? Certificates are usually public anyway, but the matching private keys aren't. CAs usually have them on hsm-devices only. if you mean private keys are shared via email: keys from the CA-Certs, or just from the Certificates the CA signed? for instance, getting a CA publicly into a browser is expensive and requires audits, so your experience makes me curious
mike_d 3y ago
Most of these are small ccTLDs with minimal management. For most countries they just kind of got assigned a TLD and some random person in the telecommunications department of the government, the postal office, or a university has been keeping it going for years. I recently tried reporting a security issue to a ccTLD. As a registrar thankfully I was able to reach out to ICANN for assistance, but even then the person who operated the TLD had just retired and there was no replacement.