| I have no issue with the situations you describe below. Mozilla should act to encourage the good behaviors that we would want a new, acquiring CA to exhibit while prohibiting the bad--or at least limiting the damage those bad behaviors might cause. It's in this latter category that I think the current policy falls short. Consider a situation in which I have a business called Easy Pete's Finishing School for Nigerian Princes. As the name might suggest, the nature of my business is to train potential scammer after potential scammer and set them free on the Internet to conduct whatever naughty things they like. It's a very lucrative business so when I see a root cert coming up for sale it's a no-brainer for me to go out and purchase it. Having access to a root will undoubtedly come in handy as I grow my business. Once I take possession of the root cert's private key and related assets, what will limit the bad actions that I intend to take? For the sake of appearances (to look like a good-guy CA) I'll apply to join the Mozilla root program but I'm only really going through the motions--even in a year's time I don't really expect to be any closer to completing the necessary steps to become an actual member. And it's true that I may be prohibited from issuing certs per Mozilla policy, but that actually is a bit of a squishy statement. For example, I'll still need to reissue certs to the existing customers as their certs expire or if they need rekeying. Perhaps I'll also get those clients to provide me with their private key so I may hold it for "safe keeping". Sure, it's a violation of the BR's but I'm not concerned with that. Besides, it will take some time until anyone even figures out what I'm doing. The other recourse in the current policy is to distrust the root cert altogether. Even then it will take time to take full effect and who knows, maybe I can still use the root for code signing? And then there are the existing customers who are left holding a soon-to-be worthless cert.... Leaving behind this land of hypotheticals, it seems to me the policy as written is weaker than it ought to be. My own opinion is that only a member CA should be allowed to purchase a root cert (and assets), regardless if it's only one cert or the whole company. If that's going too far, I think details are needed for what "regular business operations" are allowed during the period between acquisition of the root and acceptance into the Mozilla root program. And should there be a maximum time allowed to become such a member?
On Monday, 3 April 2017 23:34:44 UTC+1, Peter Kurrasch wrote: > I must be missing something still? The implication here is that a purchaser who is not yet part of the root program is permitted to take possession of the root cert private key and possibly the physical space, key personnel, networking infrastructure, revocation systems, and responsibility for subordinates without having first demonstrated any competence at running a CA organization. This appears to me to simply be a fact, not a policy. Suppose Honest Achmed's used car business has got him into serious debt. Facing bankruptcy, Achmed is ordered by a court to immediately sell the CA to another company Rich & Dick LLC, which has never historically operated a CA but has made informal offers previously. Now, Mozilla could say, OK, if that happens we'll immediately distrust the root. But to what end? This massively inconveniences everybody, there's no upside except that in the hypothetical scenario where Rick & Dick are bad guys the end users are protected (eventually, as distrust trickles out into the wild) from bad issuances they might make. But a single such issuance would trigger that distrust already under the policy as written and we have no reason to suppose they're bad guys. On the other hand, if Rich & Dick are actually an honest outfit, the policy as written lets them talk to Mozilla, make representations to m.d.s.policy and get themselves trusted, leaving the existing Honest Achmed subscribers with working certificates while everything is straightened out, all Rich & Dick need to do is leave issuance switched off while they reach an agreement. Because continuing trust is always at Mozilla's discretion if something truly egregious happened (e.g. Achmed's CA is declared bankrupt, a San Francisco start-up with four employees and $6Bn of capital buys their hardware for pennies on the dollar and announces it'll be issuing free MITM SSL certificates starting Monday morning) then Mozilla is still free to take extraordinary action and distrust Achmed's root immediately without waiting until Monday morning. _______________________________________________ dev-security-policy mailing list dev-security-policy@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-security-policy | ||
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