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It will make ACME the only viable option. I believe there is a second free ACME CA and other CAs will likely adopt ACME if they want to stay relevant. Ideally,
by tgsovlerkhgsel 10mo ago
It will make ACME the only viable option. I believe there is a second free ACME CA and other CAs will likely adopt ACME if they want to stay relevant.
Ideally, this will take less ongoing labor than annual manual rotations, and I'd argue sites that can't handle this would have been likely to break at the next annual rotation anyways.
If they have certificates managed by hosters, the hosters will deal with it. If they don't, then someone was already paying for the renewal and handling the replacement on the server side, making it much more likely that it will be fixed.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- michaelt 10mo agoI'm quite surprised the CA/Browser Forum went for this. Nobody's paying for EV certificates now browsers don't display the EV details. The only reason to pay for a certificate is if you're rotating certificates manually, and the 90 day expiry of Lets Encrypt certificates is a hassle. If the CA/Browser Forum is forcing everyone to run ACME clients (or outsource to a managed provider like AWS or Cloudflare) doesn't that eliminate the last substantial reason to give money to a CA?
- joking 10mo agoMy case, I have to manage a portal for old tvs and those don’t accept the LE root certificate since they changed a couple of years ago. Unfortunately the vendor is unable to update the firmware with new certificates and we are sold
- aftbit 10mo agoYeah that LE root certificate change broke our PROD for about 25% of traffic when it happened. Everyone acts like we control our client's cert chains. Clients don't look at the failure and think "our system is broken - we should upgrade". They look at the connection failure and think "this vendor is busted - might as well switch to someone who works". I switched away from LE to the other free ACME provider for our public-facing certs after that.
- nickf 10mo agoRoots for all CAs are going to be rotating much more frequently now. Looking to be every 5 years.
- michaelt 10mo agoI'd be interested in hearing more - do you have a source for this? Seems to me CAs have intermediate certificates and can rotate those, not much upside to rotating the root certificates, and lots of downsides.
- nickf 10mo agoChrome root policy, and likely other root policies are moving toward 5-years rotation of the roots, and annual rotation of issuing CAs. Cross-signing works fine for root rotation in most cases, unless you use IIS, then it becomes a fun problem.
- mikestorrent 10mo agoWhat an absolute pain in the ass for a mediocre increase in security.
- aaomidi 10mo agoThe upside to rotating roots is: 1. These might need to happen as emergencies if something bad happens 2. If roots rotate often then we build the muscle of making sure trust bundles can be updated I think the weird amount they are being rotated today is the real root cause if broken devices and we need to stop the bleed at some point.
- selcuka 10mo ago> If roots rotate often then we build the muscle of making sure trust bundles can be updated Five years is not enough incentive to push this change. A TV manufacturer can simply shrug and claim that the device is not under warranty anymore. We'll only end up with more bricked devices.
- deepsun 10mo agoWell, how the vendor was going to apply other security updates if they cannot update their basic security trust store? If the vendor is really unable to update, then it's at best negligence when designing the product, and at worst -- planned obsolescence.
- lokar 10mo agoYeah, participation in web tls requires the ability to regularly update your server and client code. Nothing stays the same forever, software is never done. It’s absurd pretend otherwise.
- michaelt 10mo ago1. Ship the product with automatic updates delivered over https 2. Product is a smart fridge or whatever, reasonable users might keep it offline for 5+ years. 3. New homeowner connects it to the internet. 4. Security update fails because the security update server's SSL cert isn't signed by a trusted root.
- array_key_first 10mo agoThe real solution is making your shit modifiable by the client. We do car recalls all the time. Just send out an email or something with instructions of what to put on a USB, it's basically the same thing. Yes it's inconvenient for consumers and annoying but the alternative is worse. Essentially hard coding certificates was always a bad idea.
- throw0101a 10mo ago> I'm quite surprised the CA/Browser Forum went for this. The CA folks and the Browser folks may have had differences of opinions.
- tptacek 10mo agoYou think? :)
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- immibis 10mo agoYes. Mozilla presumably want this rent-seeking industry of useless middleman to disappear.
- immibis 10mo agoDownvoted by rent-seeking useless middlemen, presumably
- beaugunderson 10mo agoThe CA/BF has a history of terrible decisions, for example 2020's "Baseline Requirements for the Issuance and Management of Publicly-Trusted Code Signing Certificates". Microsoft voted for it, and now they are basically the only game in town for cloud signing that is affordable for individuals. The Forum needs voting representatives for software developers and end users or else the members will just keep enriching themselves at our expense.
- account42 10mo agoHow is the CA/B forum relevant for code signing certificates?
- beaugunderson 10mo agoHow are they not? :) They set the baseline standard for code signing certificates. In 2020 they added the requirement to use hardware modules which resulted in much higher prices and fewer small developers opting to sign their code.
- gregoryl 10mo agoThey won't adopt Acme, as once a customer adopts it, the effort to transition to a new (free) provider is almost zero. I expect they will introduce new, "more secure", proprietary methods, and ride the vendor lock-in until the paid certificate industries death.
- ozim 10mo agoFree providers have limits and this new time limitation will also play into that as there will be many more certificates to renew. Large companies will keep on using paid providers also for business continuity in case free provider will fail. Also I don’t know what kind of SLA you have on let’s encrypt. It is more complicated than „oh it is free let’s move on”.
- oooyay 10mo agoMost every modern "big company" I have worked for is leveraging LetsEncrypt in some capacity where appropriate; some definitely more than others. I don't think you're completely wrong but I also think you're being a bit dismissive.
- ozim 10mo agoI hope everyone will adopt ACME I still have to send CSR to the customers and they send me cert back. It is okish once a year.
- aaomidi 10mo agoThere are 2 and GTS is also technically free. Just hard to use.