Re: Security-Critical Information (i.e. Private Key) transmitted by Firefox to CA (i.e. Thawte) during X.509 key/cert generation

2008-12-28 Thread Nelson B Bolyard
Kaspar Brand wrote, On 2008-12-27 03:21: Michael Ströder wrote: I personally don't know whether the current Mozilla implementation of crypto.generateCRMFRequest includes the private key of an encryption cert. Only if you tell it do so, and only if it's a key-exchange-only key. [1]

Re: Security-Critical Information (i.e. Private Key) transmitted by Firefox to CA (i.e. Thawte) during X.509 key/cert generation

2008-12-28 Thread Nelson B Bolyard
Fost1954 wrote, On 2008-12-27 06:54: *_With other words (adapted from N. Bolyard):_* b) Is there any way for a Firefox user to detect that his CA has requested [the] private key [to be transmitted] ? _Possible Answer by Kaspar Band: _ ...an Encryption Key Copy warning dialog will be

Re: [Fwd: Follow-Up on www.verisign.com SSL Order]

2008-12-28 Thread Michael Ströder
Reed Loden wrote: On Sat, 27 Dec 2008 13:55:45 +0100 Michael Ströder mich...@stroeder.com wrote: Patricia, we saw several strange things from Certstar during the last days, not just one mistake: 1. Spam e-mail to StartCom customers showing dubious business practices Spam wasn't just

CAs and external entities (resellers, outsourcing)

2008-12-28 Thread Kai Engert
After having read the posts related to the unbelievable event, I understand the event involved an approved CA and an external entity they work with. From my perspective, it's a CA's job to ensure competent verification of certificate requests. The auditing required for CAs is supposed to prove

Re: Security-Critical Information (i.e. Private Key) transmitted by Firefox to CA (i.e. Thawte) during X.509 key/cert generation

2008-12-28 Thread Eddy Nigg
On 12/28/2008 12:50 PM, Nelson B Bolyard: I also think we need a page or two on developer.mozilla.org that fully documents both thekeygen tag and the crypto.generateCRMFRequest method. The existing documentation is very incomplete. Thekeygen tag, for example, accepts many more arguments than

Re: Security-Critical Information (i.e. Private Key) transmitted by Firefox to CA (i.e. Thawte) during X.509 key/cert generation

2008-12-28 Thread Michael Ströder
Nelson B Bolyard wrote: I also think we need a page or two on developer.mozilla.org that fully documents both the keygen tag and the crypto.generateCRMFRequest method. +1 The existing documentation is very incomplete. The keygen tag, for example, accepts many more arguments than are now

dropping the root is useless

2008-12-28 Thread Ian G
On 28/12/08 12:13, Kai Engert wrote: If we'd like to be strict, we could remove CAs from our approved list if they have shown to be non-conforming in the above way. Yes, we could! But this is what we call a blunt weapon. It is also a dangerous weapon. Consider (all) the consequences in

Can you rely on an Audit?

2008-12-28 Thread Ian G
On 28/12/08 12:13, Kai Engert wrote: From my perspective, it's a CA's job to ensure competent [stuff]. OK. The auditing required for CAs is supposed to prove it. This might be a bit too strong. Let's look at that. What audits do is confirm criteria, and provide an opinion that the

Re: dropping the root is useless

2008-12-28 Thread Eddy Nigg
On 12/28/2008 02:46 PM, Ian G: 1. Certs: All end-users who rely on these certs will lose. That probably numbers in the millions. All subscribers will lose, probably in the thousands. The CA will lose; potentially it will lose its revenue stream, or have it sliced in half (say), which is what we

Re: Can you rely on an Audit?

2008-12-28 Thread Eddy Nigg
On 12/28/2008 03:23 PM, Ian G: [1] disclosure, I work as an auditor Since you are making a claim here of being an auditor - and specially in the context of WebTrust or similar criteria, can you please also disclose which formal training and titles you have? For which audit firm are you

Re: dropping the root is useless

2008-12-28 Thread Ian G
(following is just for the record so as to deal with the response. No new info is in here for other readers.) On 28/12/08 14:21, Eddy Nigg wrote: On 12/28/2008 02:46 PM, Ian G: 1. Certs: All end-users who rely on these certs will lose. That probably numbers in the millions. All

Re: Can you rely on an Audit?

2008-12-28 Thread Ian G
On 28/12/08 14:57, Eddy Nigg wrote: On 12/28/2008 03:23 PM, Ian G: [1] disclosure, I work as an auditor Since you are making a claim here of being an auditor - and specially in the context of WebTrust or similar criteria, OK, to answer the implied question here, the criteria are those

Re: dropping the root is useless

2008-12-28 Thread Eddy Nigg
On 12/28/2008 04:24 PM, Ian G: 1. Certs: All end-users who rely on these certs will lose. That probably numbers in the millions. All subscribers will lose, probably in the thousands. The CA will lose; potentially it will lose its revenue stream, or have it sliced in half (say), which is what we

Re: Security-Critical Information (i.e. Private Key) transmittedby Firefox to CA (i.e. Thawte) during X.509 key/cert generation

2008-12-28 Thread Anders Rundgren
I wouldn't spend much work on keygen and crypto.generateCRMFRequest because they don't match today's needs anyway. You cannot even as an issuer control PIN code settings (policy) unless you have a pre-configured crypto container, i.e. these mechanisms are tools for toy PKIs. Serious PKIs use

Re: Security-Critical Information (i.e. Private Key) transmitted by Firefox to CA (i.e. Thawte) during X.509 key/cert generation

2008-12-28 Thread Fost1954
2008/12/28 Nelson B Bolyard nel...@bolyard.me I think the question is: is there any way for a web site to suppress that [private key transmission warning-] dialog? Yes: this should be the point. Having the certainty, that a warning dialog cannot be suppressed when a private key is to be

problem with JSS-based custom RMI factory

2008-12-28 Thread alex . agranov
I'm trying to create a simple Java RMI application with a custom factory that uses JSS SSL classes. So I created a simple server and client factories that create SSLServerSocket and SSLSocket instances correspondingly. But when my client tries to lookup in the registry, the following happens:

Re: CAs and external entities (resellers, outsourcing)

2008-12-28 Thread Ian G
Hi Kai, long reply, I appreciate the grounding in actual policies and practices! This allows us to explore what we really can and cannot do. (I've cut two of your comments out to other posts where they might be generally intersting for the wider audience.) On 28/12/08 12:13, Kai Engert

Re: dropping the root is useless

2008-12-28 Thread Ian G
On 28/12/08 15:42, Eddy Nigg wrote: On 12/28/2008 04:24 PM, Ian G: I was clearly replying to the later part: The CA will lose; potentially it will lose its revenue stream, or have it sliced in half (say), which is what we would call in business circles a plausible bankrupcy event. It's not

Re: Security-Critical Information (i.e. Private Key) transmittedby Firefox to CA (i.e. Thawte) during X.509 key/cert generation

2008-12-28 Thread Ian G
On 28/12/08 15:47, Anders Rundgren wrote: PKIX are not aware of the problem because PKIX don't do browsers, they do ASN.1. Who does browsers? iang ___ dev-tech-crypto mailing list dev-tech-crypto@lists.mozilla.org

Re: Security-Critical Information (i.e. Private Key) transmittedby Firefox to CA (i.e. Thawte) during X.509 key/cert generation

2008-12-28 Thread Michael Ströder
Anders Rundgren wrote: I wouldn't spend much work on keygen and crypto.generateCRMFRequest because they don't match today's needs anyway. Anders, does the word keygen trigger an automatic response in your news bot? ;-} Your comment is not relevant in this context. Off course the *existing*

Re: Security-Critical Information (i.e. Private Key) transmittedbyFirefox to CA (i.e. Thawte) during X.509 key/cert generation

2008-12-28 Thread Anders Rundgren
Michael Ströder wrote: Anders Rundgren wrote: I wouldn't spend much work on keygen and crypto.generateCRMFRequest because they don't match today's needs anyway. Anders, does the word keygen trigger an automatic response in your news bot? ;-} Well, some 1000h into its successor have left some

Re: CAs and external entities (resellers, outsourcing)

2008-12-28 Thread Eddy Nigg
On 12/28/2008 01:13 PM, Kai Engert: The current Mozilla CA Certificate Policy says: 6. We require that all CAs whose certificates are distributed with our software products: ... provide attestation of their conformance to the stated verification requirements ... Kai, just to counter Ian's

Re: dropping the root is useless

2008-12-28 Thread David E. Ross
On 12/28/2008 4:46 AM, Ian G wrote [in part]: On 28/12/08 12:13, Kai Engert wrote: If we'd like to be strict, we could remove CAs from our approved list if they have shown to be non-conforming in the above way. Yes, we could! But this is what we call a blunt weapon. It is also a

Re: [Fwd: Follow-Up on www.verisign.com SSL Order]

2008-12-28 Thread Eddy Nigg
On 12/28/2008 09:45 PM, Reed Loden: You can use any e-mail address as a Google Account, so yes, I really think so. Patricia's reply confirms this, too. Reed, Servage is a hosting company, their MX record isn't that of Google, but their own. This email account is not hosted with Google. You

Re: Security-Critical Information (i.e. Private Key) transmittedbyFirefox to CA (i.e. Thawte) during X.509 key/cert generation

2008-12-28 Thread Nelson B Bolyard
Anders Rundgren wrote, On 2008-12-28 07:52: [...] most organizations are more concerned about sent data than received [...] This is one reason (out of many) that Mozilla's S/MIME mail clients require that the sender be an implicit recipient of any encrypted messages sent. It ensures that the

Re: Security-Critical Information (i.e. Private Key) transmittedby Firefox to CA (i.e. Thawte) during X.509 key/cert generation

2008-12-28 Thread Kyle Hamilton
(Note: this is almost completely off-topic as relates to the OP's message.) REAL programmers do everything they can to point out flaws of things that don't meet their needs, but are easier to use, older, more-debugged, and sufficient for those cases that don't require the ability to trust code

Re: Security-Critical Information (i.e. Private Key) transmitted by Firefox to CA (i.e. Thawte) during X.509 key/cert generation

2008-12-28 Thread Nelson B Bolyard
Michael Ströder wrote, On 2008-12-28 04:38 PST: Nelson B Bolyard wrote: I also think we need a page or two on developer.mozilla.org that fully documents both the keygen tag and the crypto.generateCRMFRequest method. +1 The existing documentation is very incomplete. The keygen tag, for

Re: dropping the root is useless

2008-12-28 Thread Kyle Hamilton
On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 6:24 AM, Ian G i...@iang.org wrote: (following is just for the record so as to deal with the response. No new info is in here for other readers.) I would very much appreciate it if you would stop using fear, uncertainty, and doubt to manipulate the audience into

Re: dropping the root is useless

2008-12-28 Thread Kyle Hamilton
On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 9:28 AM, Ian G i...@iang.org wrote: On 28/12/08 17:06, David E. Ross wrote: How about the users of Mozilla products who might lose money or even go bankrupt because they trusted a root certificate from such a CA? No, such losses are not known (yet). What did happen,

Re: dropping the root is useless

2008-12-28 Thread Ian G
On 29/12/08 00:37, Kyle Hamilton wrote: On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 9:28 AM, Ian Gi...@iang.org wrote: On 28/12/08 17:06, David E. Ross wrote: How about the users of Mozilla products who might lose money or even go bankrupt because they trusted a root certificate from such a CA? No, such losses

Re: dropping the root is useless

2008-12-28 Thread Kyle Hamilton
On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 3:42 PM, Ian G i...@iang.org wrote: On 29/12/08 00:37, Kyle Hamilton wrote: Considering that trustability is viewed as a binary state, it's the only weapon that Mozilla has. Yes. This is reason for concern. FWIW, I agree. Alright, I propose that, in a new thread,

Re: dropping the root is useless

2008-12-28 Thread Ian G
On 29/12/08 00:36, Kyle Hamilton wrote: On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 6:24 AM, Ian Gi...@iang.org wrote: Unlike you, Eddy actually runs a certifying authority. This means that he has operational experience with not only the technical sides of things, but also the legal sides of things. I

Re: dropping the root is useless

2008-12-28 Thread Eddy Nigg
On 12/29/2008 03:09 AM, Ian G: The point I have made is that the discussion of Comodo's operations is outside scope of this forum. You may feel that you have an opinion, and you have a right to it. However, this forum is not for the investigation of breaches or failures to comply with policies.

Re: dropping the root is useless

2008-12-28 Thread David E. Ross
On 12/28/2008 3:45 PM, Kyle Hamilton wrote [in part]: CertStar was found out, only due to the diligence of someone on this list. How many other RAs haven't been found out yet? We can't know, because Comodo won't say. This affects the confidence I have in their system (i.e., it removes ALL

Re: dropping the root is useless

2008-12-28 Thread Nelson B Bolyard
David E. Ross wrote, On 2008-12-28 21:40 PST: Now that it is known that a subordinate reseller operating under one CA issued certificates without authenticating the identity of the subscribers, we know that the theoretical concern expressed (before all this) about resellers is no longer

Re: [Fwd: Follow-Up on www.verisign.com SSL Order]

2008-12-28 Thread Reed Loden
On Sun, 28 Dec 2008 22:13:53 +0200 Eddy Nigg eddy_n...@startcom.org wrote: On 12/28/2008 09:45 PM, Reed Loden: You can use any e-mail address as a Google Account, so yes, I really think so. Patricia's reply confirms this, too. Reed, Servage is a hosting company, their MX record isn't

Re: dropping the root is useless

2008-12-28 Thread Grey Hodge
On 12/28/2008 9:42 AM Eddy Nigg cranked up the brainbox and said: On 12/28/2008 04:24 PM, Ian G: No, I'm afraid there is an agreement to list the root, under a policy. Once listed, Mozilla has to operate according to its side of the bargain. Apparently you are reading something I haven't.