An Interactive Graph of the Certificate Authority Ecosystem

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers of the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley have created an interactive diagram that shows root-CAs, their intermediates, the relationships between them and how many certificates have been signed by them. The graph was generated by passively monitoring the Internet uplinks of a number of (mostly) edu sites for SSL connections and their certificate Information. Among other things the graph shows that one GoDaddy intermediate signed more than 74,000 certificates and that a German CA uses more than 200 sub-CAs for administrative reasons."

Comments

The graphic is a lie

[Dynedain]

The graph, while cool, sucks!

It implies a root signer, which isn't really there. By clumping all the various networks identified within a circle, they make it look like there are connections between the networks that don't really exist.

Look carefully around the edge between the inner and outer circles, there's nothing that bridges them.

Now look carefully around the outer circle, you'll see it isn't one continuous network, it's a bunch of small networks just sitting next to each other.

The whole reason for putting data in a graphic is so that you can draw new meaning from visual clues because the human brain is so good at interpreting visual information. However, if you force stuff into shapes like this, you imply meaning that isn't really there.