Re: $90 for high assurance _versus_ $349 for low assurance
On Tue, Mar 15, 2005 at 11:04:59AM -0500, Victor Duchovni wrote: On Wed, Mar 16, 2005 at 02:23:49AM +1300, Peter Gutmann wrote: Certainly with UIXC it's not worth anything. What is UIXC? lemme guess: universal indiscriminate cross certification oh wait, peter did define it: implicit not indiscriminate -- Ng Pheng Siong [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://sandbox.rulemaker.net/ngps -+- M2Crypto, ZServerSSL for Zope, Blog http://www.sqlcrypt.com -+- Database Engine with Transparent AES Encryption - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: $90 for high assurance _versus_ $349 for low assurance
John, thanks for this fascinating report! Conclusion? `Not all CAs/certs are created equal`... therefore we should NOT automatically trust the contents of every certificate whose CA appears in the `root CA` list of the browser. Instead, browsers should allow users to select which CAs they trust sufficiently to identify sites, and to _know_ which CA is identifying the (protected) site they use. This is easy to do, and of course you can add this to your Mozilla/FireFox browser by installing our TrustBar (from http://TrustBar.mozdev.org). Best, Amir Herzberg John Levine wrote: Does anyone have a view on what low and high means in this context? Indeed, what does assurance mean? Just last week I was trying to figure out what the difference was between a StarterSSL certificate for $35 (lists at $49 but you might as well sign up for the no-commitment reseller price) and a QuickSSL cert for $169. If you look at the bits in the cert, they're nearly identical, both signed by Geotrust's root. As far as the verification they do, QuickSSL sends an e-mail to the domain's contact address (WHOIS or one of the standard domain addresses like webmaster), and if someone clicks through the URL, it's verified. StarterSSL even though it costs less has a previous telephone step where you give them a phone number, they call you, and you have to punch in a code they show you and then record your name. Score so far: QuickSSL 0.001, StarterSSL 0.0015. Both have various documents available with impressive certifications from well-paid accountants, none of which mean anything I can tell. Under some circumstances they might pay back some amount to someone defrauded by a spoofed cert, but if anyone's figured out how to take advantage of this, I'd be amazed. Comodo, who sell an inferior variety of cert with a chained signature (inferior because less software supports it, not because it's any less secure) is slightly more demanding, although I stumped then with abuse.net which isn't incorporated, isn't a DBA, and isn't anything else other than me. I invented some abuse.net stationery and faxed them a letter assuring that I was in fact me, which satisfied them. Back when I had a cert from Thawte, they wanted DUNS numbers which I didn't have, not being incorporated nor doing enough business to get a business credit rating, so they were satisfied with a fax of my county business license, a document which, if I didn't have one, costs $25 to get a real one, or maybe 15 minutes in Photoshop to make a fake one good enough to fool a fax machine. I gather that the fancier certs do more intrusive checking, but I never heard of any that did anything that might make any actual difference, like getting business documents and then checking with the purported issuer to see if they were real or, perish forbid, visiting the nominal location of the business to see if anything is there. So the short answer to what's the difference between a ten dollar cert and a $350 cert is: $340. Next question? Regards, John Levine, [EMAIL PROTECTED], Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies, Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor I shook hands with Senators Dole and Inouye, said Tom, disarmingly. - 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: $90 for high assurance _versus_ $349 for low assurance
At 9:24 PM + 3/11/05, Ian G wrote: Does anyone have a view on what low and high means in this context? Indeed, what does assurance mean? :-) By what market price, of course. Verisign is more well known to the average schmuck than godaddy is, and, apparently, the average schmuck forks over the ducats accordingly. The fact that they're currently fungible commodities, ungraded ones at that, only makes the pricing outcome more, um, interesting, if, for the moment, okay, not predictable, :-), but, what, apprehendable by common sense, at least in 20-20 ex post facto hindsight? Cheers, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: $90 for high assurance _versus_ $349 for low assurance
Does anyone have a view on what low and high means in this context? Indeed, what does assurance mean? Just last week I was trying to figure out what the difference was between a StarterSSL certificate for $35 (lists at $49 but you might as well sign up for the no-commitment reseller price) and a QuickSSL cert for $169. If you look at the bits in the cert, they're nearly identical, both signed by Geotrust's root. As far as the verification they do, QuickSSL sends an e-mail to the domain's contact address (WHOIS or one of the standard domain addresses like webmaster), and if someone clicks through the URL, it's verified. StarterSSL even though it costs less has a previous telephone step where you give them a phone number, they call you, and you have to punch in a code they show you and then record your name. Score so far: QuickSSL 0.001, StarterSSL 0.0015. Both have various documents available with impressive certifications from well-paid accountants, none of which mean anything I can tell. Under some circumstances they might pay back some amount to someone defrauded by a spoofed cert, but if anyone's figured out how to take advantage of this, I'd be amazed. Comodo, who sell an inferior variety of cert with a chained signature (inferior because less software supports it, not because it's any less secure) is slightly more demanding, although I stumped then with abuse.net which isn't incorporated, isn't a DBA, and isn't anything else other than me. I invented some abuse.net stationery and faxed them a letter assuring that I was in fact me, which satisfied them. Back when I had a cert from Thawte, they wanted DUNS numbers which I didn't have, not being incorporated nor doing enough business to get a business credit rating, so they were satisfied with a fax of my county business license, a document which, if I didn't have one, costs $25 to get a real one, or maybe 15 minutes in Photoshop to make a fake one good enough to fool a fax machine. I gather that the fancier certs do more intrusive checking, but I never heard of any that did anything that might make any actual difference, like getting business documents and then checking with the purported issuer to see if they were real or, perish forbid, visiting the nominal location of the business to see if anything is there. So the short answer to what's the difference between a ten dollar cert and a $350 cert is: $340. Next question? Regards, John Levine, [EMAIL PROTECTED], Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies, Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor I shook hands with Senators Dole and Inouye, said Tom, disarmingly. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: $90 for high assurance _versus_ $349 for low assurance
On Wed, Mar 16, 2005 at 02:23:49AM +1300, Peter Gutmann wrote: Certainly with UIXC it's not worth anything. What is UIXC? -- /\ ASCII RIBBON NOTICE: If received in error, \ / CAMPAIGN Victor Duchovni please destroy and notify X AGAINST IT Security, sender. Sender does not waive / \ HTML MAILMorgan Stanley confidentiality or privilege, and use is prohibited. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
$90 for high assurance _versus_ $349 for low assurance
In the below, John posted a handy dandy table of cert prices, and Nelson postulated that we need to separate high assurance from low assurance. Leaving aside the technical question of how the user gets to see that for now, note how godaddy charges $90 for their high assurance and Verisign charges $349 for their low assurance. Does anyone have a view on what low and high means in this context? Indeed, what does assurance mean? iang John Gilmore wrote: For the privilege of being able to communicate securely using SSL and a popular web browser, you can pay anything from $10 to $1500. Clif Cox researched cert prices from various vendors: http://neo.opn.org/~clif/SSL_CA_Notes.html Nelson B wrote: https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/ssl/ssl.asp shows that this CA runs two classes, high assurance and low assurance. Do they have two roots that correspond to these two classes? If not, how can users choose to trust high assurance separately from (perhaps instead of) low assurance certs? I think mozilla's policy should require separate roots for separate classes of assurance. Alternatively, we could require separate intermediate CAs for each class, issued from a common root, but then the intermediates would have to be shipped with mozilla so that they can be marked with explicit trust. -- News and views on what matters in finance+crypto: http://financialcryptography.com/ - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
