Monthly Archives: January 2009
How do you trust?
SSL PKI is designed to do two things: encrypt data on the wire, and allow web site validation through the use of trusted third party signatures. The former works pretty well, the Debian weak key debacle aside. Unfortunately, the latter seems about as robust and secure as Windows 98. Case in point, https://discovercard.com. As my [...]
Nobody is perfect
Just before Christmas, an admin from StartCom certificate authority disclosed that he was able to procure an SSL certificate for Mozilla.com from a registered agent of the CA Comodo. He was not authorized to obtain this certificate, and the RA and CA clearly failed to properly vette his cert signing request. Shame on Comodo. You [...]

