Symantec Explores Selling Web Certificates Business (reuters.com)

Cybersecurity firm Symantec is considering selling its website certification business, in a deal that could fetch more than $1 billion and extricate it from a feud with Alphabet's Google, people familiar with the matter told Reuters. From a report: Google said in March that it was investigating Symantec's failure to properly validate its certificates, which confirm that websites can be trusted. Symantec has called Google's claims "exaggerated and misleading." Symantec is in talks with a small number of companies and private equity firms about the potential sale, three sources said, asking not to be identified because the matter is confidential. There is no certainty that a deal will occur, the sources added.

Comments

It's about trust

[ilsaloving]

SSL Certificates is all about trust. If, as a cert authority, you violate that trust in *any* way, then you shouldn't be allowed to sell certificates anymore.

It's destressing the companies like Symantec (and Comodo for that matter) are still in the certificate authority business despite their multiple massive screwups.

Dispute Not Merely with Google

[DERoss]

So far this calendar year, Symantec has had at least two failures in its operations, failures that had the possibility of creating significant security vulnerabilities for end-users. Mozilla has demanded that Symantec remedy the situation, with Mozilla requiring a clear schedule for implementing the remedies.