Re: IP: SSL Certificate Monopoly Bears Financial Fruit
At 09:53 AM 7/11/2002 +0200, Stefan Kelm wrote: See http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/sdata/200206/certca.html for recent data re SSL certificate market share; Geotrust, at I sincerely doubt the numbers presented in this so-called survey. How did they get to a number of only 91,136 secure servers across all domains? There are a huge number of CAs, many of which offer certificates to the public (see http://www.pki-page.info/#CA). Even if most CAs will not have a significant market share those numbers would be different. For another data point, see this Netcraft survey circa January 2001 - http://www.netcraft.com/surveys/analysis/https/2001/Jan/CMatch/certs.html .. it shows approx 108,000 secure servers (they don't total it, and I didn't bother adding up all the CA's with 10 certs in use.) Security Space's numbers for the same timeframe show that they found 58,117 servers - http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/sdata/200012/certca.html. I don't know if the difference means that, between Jan 2001 and Jun 2002, Security Space has discovered the other 40,000 secure servers in use; or if they always see a fraction of what Netcraft does. (Netcraft's current data is available for a yearly subscription at 1200 UKP.) What I find especially telling in the recent Security Space results is the breakdown by validity - Valid: 17833 Self-signed: 5275 Unknown signer: 13348 Cert-host mismatch: 32536 Expired: 35071 .. so, less than 20% of the certificates that they find on SSL servers in use on the open Internet are functioning correctly as part of a PKI; even if we assume that every one of the self-signed and unknown signer certs servers are participating in undocumented or private PKIs such that their details are unavailable to surveys like this one, that's still only 40% of the visible SSL servers. The remaining 60% are apparently misconfigured or forgotten. -- Greg Broiles -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PGP 0x26E4488c or 0x94245961 - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: IP: SSL Certificate Monopoly Bears Financial Fruit
Enzo wrote quoting Lucky: The cert shows as being issued by Equifax because Geotrust purchased Equifax's root embedded in major browsers since MSIE 5 on the secondary market. (Geotrust purchased more than just the root). This raises an interesting legal issue. Should any loss from a mis-issued cert arise to a party who trusted the Equifax brand name shown in the cert chain, but doesn't know (or want to know) anything about Geotrust, who would be liable? (Yeah, I know, any liability is usually disclaimed away, but I mean: which one of the two is supposed to represent the trusted thirt party?) I suspect that until there is more case law related to digital certificates, this question will be very challenging to answer. --Lucky - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: IP: SSL Certificate Monopoly Bears Financial Fruit
RJ Harvey wrote: Thanks for the tip! I just got a new cert from Geotrust, and it was such an amazing contrast to those I've gotten from Verisign and Thawte! They apparently take the verification info from the whois data on the site, and you really can do the process from start to finish in 10 minutes or so. I believe that Geotrust has come up with an excellent new model to make money out of the CA business with minimum hassle to the customer while reducing Geotrust's vetting costs down to next to zero. Their introduction of this new model was one of the more interesting news at this year's otherwise rather bland RSA Conference. The cert shows that it's issued by Equifax, however. The cert shows as being issued by Equifax because Geotrust purchased Equifax's root embedded in major browsers since MSIE 5 on the secondary market. (Geotrust purchased more than just the root). --Lucky Green - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: IP: SSL Certificate Monopoly Bears Financial Fruit
- Original Message - From: Lucky Green [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 14, 2002 11:55 AM Subject: RE: IP: SSL Certificate Monopoly Bears Financial Fruit The cert shows that it's issued by Equifax, however. The cert shows as being issued by Equifax because Geotrust purchased Equifax's root embedded in major browsers since MSIE 5 on the secondary market. (Geotrust purchased more than just the root). This raises an interesting legal issue. Should any loss from a mis-issued cert arise to a party who trusted the Equifax brand name shown in the cert chain, but doesn't know (or want to know) anything about Geotrust, who would be liable? (Yeah, I know, any liability is usually disclaimed away, but I mean: which one of the two is supposed to represent the trusted thirt party?) Enzo - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: IP: SSL Certificate Monopoly Bears Financial Fruit
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 6 Jul 2002 at 9:33, R. A. Hettinga wrote: Thawte has now announced a round of major price increases. New cert prices appear to have almost doubled, and renewals have increased more than 50%. While Thawte proclaims this is their first price increase in five years, this comes at a time when we should be seeing *increased* competition and *lower* prices for such virtual products, not such price increases. But of course, in an effective monopoly environment, it's your way or the highway, so this should have been entirely expected. IE comes preloaded with about 34 root certificate authorities, and it is easy for the end user to add more, to add more in batches. Anyone can coerce open SSL to generate any certificates he pleases, with some work. Both Netscape 6 and MSIE 5 contain ~100 built-in, automatically-trusted CA certs. * Certs with 512-bit keys. * Certs with 40-year lifetimes. * Certs from organisations you've never heard of before (Honest Joe's Used Cars and Certificates). * Certs from CAs with unmaintained/moribund websites (404.notfound.com). These certs are what controls access to your machine (ActiveX, Java, install- on-demand, etc etc). * It takes 600-700 mouse clicks to disable these certs to leave only CAs you really trust. (The above information was taken from A rant about SSL, oder: die grosse Sicherheitsillusion by Matthias Bruestle, presented at the KNF-Kongress 2002). Why is not someone else issuing certificates? How many more do you need? Peter. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: IP: SSL Certificate Monopoly Bears Financial Fruit
Why is not someone else issuing certificates? See http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/sdata/200206/certca.html for recent data re SSL certificate market share; Geotrust, at I sincerely doubt the numbers presented in this so-called survey. How did they get to a number of only 91,136 secure servers across all domains? There are a huge number of CAs, many of which offer certificates to the public (see http://www.pki-page.info/#CA). Even if most CAs will not have a significant market share those numbers would be different. Cheers, Stefan. --- Dipl.-Inform. Stefan Kelm Security Consultant Secorvo Security Consulting GmbH Albert-Nestler-Strasse 9, D-76131 Karlsruhe Tel. +49 721 6105-461, Fax +49 721 6105-455 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.secorvo.de --- PGP Fingerprint 87AE E858 CCBC C3A2 E633 D139 B0D9 212B - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: IP: SSL Certificate Monopoly Bears Financial Fruit
Lucky Green [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Trusted roots have long been bought and sold on the secondary market as any other commodity. For surprisingly low amounts, you too can own a trusted root that comes pre-installed in 95% of all web browsers deployed. I'd heard stories of collapsed dot-coms' keys being auctioned off, that being the only thing of value the company had left. It makes the title of Matthias' paper even more appropriate. (However, I do think that anyone wanting to compromise your security will use this morning's MSIE hole to do it rather than buying a CA key. OTOH it'd be a great universal skeleton key for government agencies charged with protecting the world from equestrians). Peter. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: IP: SSL Certificate Monopoly Bears Financial Fruit
-- On 11 Jul 2002 at 1:22, Lucky Green wrote: Trusted roots have long been bought and sold on the secondary market as any other commodity. For surprisingly low amounts, you too can own a trusted root that comes pre-installed in 95% of all web browsers deployed. How much, typically? And who actually owns these numerous trusted roots? --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG y1gI63PXnGNK7Iznu3+gY+/0JLBPRaEEV/OWwPub 20YHSnGmtg7lQW0NdXU4WMeKWfIQmlq3u3F/wjkOo - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: IP: SSL Certificate Monopoly Bears Financial Fruit
Thanks for the tip! I just got a new cert from Geotrust, and it was such an amazing contrast to those I've gotten from Verisign and Thawte! They apparently take the verification info from the whois data on the site, and you really can do the process from start to finish in 10 minutes or so. The cert shows that it's issued by Equifax, however. rj At 04:31 PM 7/10/2002 -0700, Greg Broiles wrote: At 03:48 PM 7/10/2002 -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -- On 6 Jul 2002 at 9:33, R. A. Hettinga wrote: Thawte has now announced a round of major price increases. New cert prices appear to have almost doubled, and renewals have increased more than 50%. [...] Why is not someone else issuing certificates? See http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/sdata/200206/certca.html for recent data re SSL certificate market share; Geotrust, at http://www.geotrust.com, has 11% of the market, and appears (from their web pages; I haven't bought one) to be ready to issue SSL server certs without the torturous document review process which Verisign invented but Thawte managed to make simultaneously more intrusive and less relevant. -- Greg Broiles -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PGP 0x26E4488c or 0x94245961 - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED] - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: IP: SSL Certificate Monopoly Bears Financial Fruit
James wrote: On 11 Jul 2002 at 1:22, Lucky Green wrote: Trusted roots have long been bought and sold on the secondary market as any other commodity. For surprisingly low amounts, you too can own a trusted root that comes pre-installed in 95% of all web browsers deployed. How much, typically? I'd rather not state the exact figures. A search of SEC filings may or may not turn up further details. And who actually owns these numerous trusted roots? I am not sure I understand the question. --Lucky - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: IP: SSL Certificate Monopoly Bears Financial Fruit
and just to make sure there is a common understanding regarding SSL cert operation ... the browser code 1) checks that the SSL server cert can be validated by ANY public key that is in the browser preloaded list (I haven't verified whether they totally ignore all of the cert part of these preloaded public keys ... things like expiration date ... that these preloaded public keys are in the preloaded list appears to be sufficient ... details like the preloaded public keys happened to be wrappered in these certificate containers is almost extraneous). 2) validates the signature on the SSL server cert with the corresponding public key 3) checks if the website domain/host name is the same (or in some cases similar) to the domain/host name specificed in the SSL server cert. I have noticed that browsers tend to pretty much ignore the contents of these SSL server certificates ... things like expiration date ... except the public key, the domain/host name, and the signature (and the signature only has real meaning within the context of the infrastructure associated with the public key in the preloaded list with the lowest trust/integrity level; this is analogous to security weakest link ... a bank vault with a 4ft think vault door doesn't do much good if the vault has no walls). 4) uses the public key in the SSL server cert to validate communication with the server. all of this happens automagically from most users' standpoint (probably less than one percent of the population even knows that there is such a thing as a preload list). [EMAIL PROTECTED] on 7/10/2002 at 9:12 pm wrote: Both Netscape 6 and MSIE 5 contain ~100 built-in, automatically-trusted CA certs. * Certs with 512-bit keys. * Certs with 40-year lifetimes. * Certs from organisations you've never heard of before (Honest Joe's Used Cars and Certificates). * Certs from CAs with unmaintained/moribund websites (404.notfound.com). These certs are what controls access to your machine (ActiveX, Java, install- on-demand, etc etc). * It takes 600-700 mouse clicks to disable these certs to leave only CAs you really trust. (The above information was taken from A rant about SSL, oder: die grosse Sicherheitsillusion by Matthias Bruestle, presented at the KNF-Kongress 2002). Why is not someone else issuing certificates? How many more do you need? Peter. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: IP: SSL Certificate Monopoly Bears Financial Fruit
On Fri, Jul 12, 2002 at 11:18:12AM -0400, Trei, Peter wrote: | I'd rather not state the exact figures. A search of SEC filings may or | may not turn up further details. | | And who actually owns these numerous trusted roots? | | I am not sure I understand the question. | | --Lucky | | I think I do. A 'second hand' root key seems to have some | trust issues - the thing you are buying is the private half | of a public key pair but that's just a piece of information. | How can you be sure that, as purchaser, you are the *only* | possessor of the key, and no one else has another copy (the | seller, for example)? Who cares? If I can get a key thats in the main browsers for 90% off, who cares if other people have it? I understand that getting the public half of the 2 main browsers will run you about $250k in fees, plus all the setup work. If I can buy a slightly used Ncipher box whose public key bits are in the browsers for a 10th to a 5th of that, the extra copies of the bits aren't all that worrisome to me. Adam -- It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. -Hume - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: IP: SSL Certificate Monopoly Bears Financial Fruit
-- On 6 Jul 2002 at 9:33, R. A. Hettinga wrote: Thawte has now announced a round of major price increases. New cert prices appear to have almost doubled, and renewals have increased more than 50%. While Thawte proclaims this is their first price increase in five years, this comes at a time when we should be seeing *increased* competition and *lower* prices for such virtual products, not such price increases. But of course, in an effective monopoly environment, it's your way or the highway, so this should have been entirely expected. IE comes preloaded with about 34 root certificate authorities, and it is easy for the end user to add more, to add more in batches. Anyone can coerce open SSL to generate any certificates he pleases, with some work. Why is not someone else issuing certificates? --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG FgD9xqiaNt/GIr99+cDvezUuY9K7pVf/sr8sYLtx 2U+1rnhprPRzvE4aLRCq4ADtyF4DDrnAKjbwHgbFn - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: IP: SSL Certificate Monopoly Bears Financial Fruit
At 03:48 PM 7/10/2002 -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -- On 6 Jul 2002 at 9:33, R. A. Hettinga wrote: Thawte has now announced a round of major price increases. New cert prices appear to have almost doubled, and renewals have increased more than 50%. [...] Why is not someone else issuing certificates? See http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/sdata/200206/certca.html for recent data re SSL certificate market share; Geotrust, at http://www.geotrust.com, has 11% of the market, and appears (from their web pages; I haven't bought one) to be ready to issue SSL server certs without the torturous document review process which Verisign invented but Thawte managed to make simultaneously more intrusive and less relevant. -- Greg Broiles -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PGP 0x26E4488c or 0x94245961 - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
