At 13:00 11/09/2011 -0600, Keith Medcalf wrote:
Damian Menscher wrote on 2011-09-11:
> Because of that lost trust, any cross-signed cert would likely be
> revoked by the browsers. It would also make the browser vendors
> question whether the signing CA is worthy of their trust.
And therein is the root of the problem: Trustworthiness is assessed by
what you refer to as the "browser vendors". Unfortunately, there is no
Trustworthiness assessment of those vendors.
The current system provides no more authentication or confidentiality than
if everyone simply used self-signed certificates. It is nothing more than
theatre and provides no actual security benefit whatsoever. Anyone
believing otherwise is operating under a delusion.
The problem is about lack of pen-testing and a philosphy of security. In
order to run a CA, one not only has to build the infrastructure but also
have constant external pen-testing and patch management in place. Whether
it be Comodo or RSA or now Diginotar, unless an overwhelming philosphy of
"computer and network security" is paradigmed into the corporate DNA, this
will keep happening - and not only to CAs but to the likes of Google,
Cisco, Microsoft, etc. (read - APT attacks).
If 60% of your employees will plug in a USB drive they find in the parking
lot, then you have failed:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-27/human-errors-fuel-hacking-as-test-shows-nothing-prevents-idiocy.html
The problem for us as a community if to find a benchmark of which company
"does have a clue" vs those that don't. Until then, it will just be
whack-a-mole/CA.
-Hank
--- Keith Medcalf
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