Martin, > Are wildcard certficates good? secure? useful?
There's a problem with wildcard certs wrt how URLs are being displayed in many of the browsers, esp. the older ones. If the host name is extremely long the browser will be unable to show the complete URL to the user, with some browsers even inserting "..." into the address window. Now, suppose I buy a certificate for *.i-am-bad.com (assuming that I'm the owner of that domain). I could then set up an SSL server with a hostname of something like www.security-products.microsoft.com.order.registration.checkout.user- support.i-am-bad.com hoping that the browser will only display the more familiar looking parts of the URL to the user who in turn will happily accept the certificate. You get the idea. Cheers, Stefan. -------------------------------------------------------- Security Awareness Symposium - 24.-25.06.2003, Karlsruhe http://www.security-awareness-symposium.de/ -------------------------------------------------------- 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]