Slashdot Mirror
Let's Encrypt Criticized Over Speedy HTTPS Certifications (threatpost.com)
100 million HTTPS certificates were issued in the last year by Let's Encrypt -- a free certificate authority founded by Mozilla, Cisco and the Electronic Frontier Foundation -- and they're now issuing more than 100,000 HTTPS certificates every day. Should they be performing more vetting? msm1267 shared this article from Kaspersky Lab's ThreatPost blog:
[S]ome critics are sounding alarm bells and warning that Let's Encrypt might be guilty of going too far, too fast, and delivering too much of a good thing without the right checks and balances in place. The primary concern has been that while the growth of SSL/TLS encryption is a positive trend, it also offers criminals an easy way to facilitate website spoofing, server impersonation, man-in-the-middle attacks, and a way to sneak malware through company firewalls... Critics do not contend Let's Encrypt is responsible for these types of abuses. Rather, because it is the 800-pound gorilla when it comes to issuing basic domain validation certificates, critics believe Let's Encrypt could do a better job vetting applicants to weed out bad actors... "I think there should be some type of vetting process. That would make it more difficult for malicious actors to get them," said Justin Jett, director of audit and compliance at Plixer, a network traffic analytics firm...
Josh Aas, executive director of the Internet Security Research Group, the organization that oversees Let's Encrypt, points out that its role is not to police the internet, rather its mission is to make communications secure. He added that, unlike commercial certificate authorities, it keeps a searchable public database of every single domain it issues. "When people get surprised at the number of PayPal phishing sites and get worked up about it, the reason they know about it is because we allow anyone to search our records," he said. Many other certificate authorities keep their databases of issued certificates private, citing competitive reasons and that customers don't want to broadcast the names of their servers... The reason people treat us like a punching bag is that we are big and we are transparent. "
The criticism intensified after Let's Encrypt announced they'd soon offer wildcard certificates for subdomains. But the article also cites security researcher Scott Helme, who "argued if encryption is to be available to all then that includes the small percent of bad actors. 'I don't think it's for Signal, or Let's Encrypt, to decide who should have access to encryption."
Josh Aas, executive director of the Internet Security Research Group, the organization that oversees Let's Encrypt, points out that its role is not to police the internet, rather its mission is to make communications secure. He added that, unlike commercial certificate authorities, it keeps a searchable public database of every single domain it issues. "When people get surprised at the number of PayPal phishing sites and get worked up about it, the reason they know about it is because we allow anyone to search our records," he said. Many other certificate authorities keep their databases of issued certificates private, citing competitive reasons and that customers don't want to broadcast the names of their servers... The reason people treat us like a punching bag is that we are big and we are transparent. "
The criticism intensified after Let's Encrypt announced they'd soon offer wildcard certificates for subdomains. But the article also cites security researcher Scott Helme, who "argued if encryption is to be available to all then that includes the small percent of bad actors. 'I don't think it's for Signal, or Let's Encrypt, to decide who should have access to encryption."
Kaspersky Labs needs to get some good press, so they create a strawman reason to criticize Let's Encrypt and then start blogging. As Let's Encrypt says, "its role is not to police the internet, rather its mission is to make communications secure." One has to wonder why Kapersky Labs has a problem with that.
"I don't think it's for Signal, or Let's Encrypt, to decide who should have access to encryption."
Similarly, I don't think it makes a lick of sense that Google is a "super-authority" in deprecating entire CAs. That's rather close to a mechanism for monopoly.
My boss recently got an ESL certificate from a reputable tier-1 vendor. The validation was a complete joke: A guy with bad English asked him some questions over the phone that anybody could have found the answers to with a bit of work. The only security in place for ESL certs is that they are not that cheap, but that does not help against a targeted attack, because they are not really expensive either.
The bottom line is that certificates weakly ensure one thing: You are still talking to the same site on the next visit. They also ensure that small-time criminals will find it somewhat difficult to eavesdrop. And that is about it. In many cases, self-signed certificates will be more secure than that. The whole certificate-system is a bad joke, created by the utterly incompetent with too much trust and then corrupted by state-sponsored malicious actors. Incidentally, this is not a surprise. Basically all what is broken with the system now was predicted by perceptive people decades ago.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
"We're mad because Let's Encrypt makes it way too easy for the plebs to get a certificate without paying hundreds or thousands of dollars per year to a CA."
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
and they're now issuing more than 100,000 HTTPS certificates every day. Should they be performing more vetting?
Why hold one CA to a completely different set of standards than every other CA?
The primary concern has been that while the growth of SSL/TLS encryption is a positive trend, it also offers criminals an easy way to facilitate website spoofing, server impersonation, man-in-the-middle attacks, and a way to sneak malware through company firewalls...
And how does any other CA prevent this after issuing certificates with the exact same level of proof of domain ownership?
Are you claiming that because it's free that criminals can now finally obtain certificates?
Criminal rings have profits and budgets orders of magnitude larger than most IT departments!
That logic is as ass backward as it possibly could be.
"I think there should be some type of vetting process. That would make it more difficult for malicious actors to get them," said Justin Jett, director of audit and compliance at Plixer, a network traffic analytics firm...
Then go get the CA/Browser Forum to amend their requirements that all CAs and web browser makers follow.
It's completely pointless to say Lets Encrypt isn't allowed to do for free what all the other CAs are still allowed to do for a few bucks.
One big reason for the volume of certificate issuance is that LetsEncrypt forces you to update your certificates at least once every 90 days. This means that the number of certificates issued is guaranteed to be at least 4x the number that would be issued by a traditional CA, and realistically, more like 12x or even 20x.
So yes, they should be criticized, but they should be criticized for the ridiculously short certificate expiration times that result in them issuing so many certificates each day, not for the number of certificates per se. That silly policy decision inherently limits the amount of verification that they can do, so even if they wanted to do more, they can't.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Calling BS on this. There is nothing inherently wrong with issuing certs. Regardless of who issues those certs, they can only be used to create a secure identified connections between a user and a server.
They definitely do not facilitate criminality any more than Apache2 does. This is just pure silliness. There's nothing wrong here. Bad guys can get certs from other sources just as easily as anyone else. They can get them from Let's Encrypt, too. So can everyone else. A certificate doesn't facilitate illegal activity. It's just for a secure connection.
Something tell me there's more to this than simply crying wolf about bad guys getting certs easily. Someone obviously would prefer that web hosts, big and small, don't get cheap (or free) certs to secure their connections from prying eyes.
While the justification might be 'bad guys are abusing this,' I'm still calling BS. Someone (or some *cough* three letter agency) is annoyed that people can easily secure their servers.
I'd go as far as to say, Let's Encrypt is having precisely the effect it sought to have. More secure connections on all HTTP traffic across the web. Anyone can TLS up their servers now with very little effort. Good job, Let's Encrypt, you're having a profound and ultimately awesome effect on the web's privacy and shielding from prying eyes. And that effect is a good one, especially when people are crying 'omg it's too easy to get certs now!' Good. Nothing like a very secure connection to give the middle finger to three letter agencies.
No. You have to explain to get you misinformed her. You have to tell her that what you initially told her was never true, and you had no idea what you were talking about.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Stop spreading misinformation. They are 100% verified. They verify that the person requesting the certificate for the server in fact controls the server.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I've spent better part of a day to explain to My Mom how to distinguish a safe website from unsafe one. You look at the Green Bar / Lock. Is it green? you are good to give them your name and CC details.
Now I'm going to her and have to explain, that no, things have changed
No, nothing has changed about what that green bar means: encrypted connection. You pushed a false idea on to your mother, an idea that companies planted and you blindly accepted.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The S stands secure and has always stood for that. Her CC number will be securely sent to the server in question. Again, LetsEncrypt changes nothing about how all this works. You have no clue. If she connects securely to trumpuniversity.com or does so through http she will get scammed either way. Read the hundreds of other posts here where everyone else already understands this. Time to admit to mom you aren't the ubergeek you let them think you are I'm afraid. Off you go now ...
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
You're making assumptions about what "secure" means in this context. It means the communications are secure from 3rd parties. That doesn't mean the website you're communicating with isn't evil. It never has.
Lets Encrypt verifies ownership of the domain. If you see the secured indicator in the browser, its a gaurantee that your actually talking to the server of the people who own that domain. So, if people watch out for the right domain as well as the secured indicator, it provides additional safety. So, people need to know the domains of critical sites they might use, and look carefully at that domain name. This is true as well, if there were no TLS being used. TLS provides additional gaurantees you really are talking to that domain and that no one is listening. Lets Encrypt makes things much more secure, rather than less security than before. However, certs with stronger vetting would verify ownership more of the domain a well as the certificate, maybe making sure that the domain is not hosting a malicious site that is spoofing a real bank or something.
There is a solution to this: have two grades of certificates, one with one star free certicates based on the Lets Encrypt model, for low risk sites and two stars for high risk.
Lets Encrypt, would not be an issue at all, furthermore, providing we do this: It might be a good idea, to have multiple security levels in the indicator, maybe one star for a Lets Encrypt type cert, maybe two stars for more intensive verification methods. this would allow the easy availability of Lets Encrypt to continue, but for banks etc to apply for the second star certificate for higher level of verification.
For many sites, like the personal website, Lets Encrypt is fine, without it those sites wouldnt encrypt anyway since its not worth the vast sums for a certificate from one of the commercial providers. For a bank, getting a cert with stronger vetting might make sense, and there is a better trade off for them to do it.
You could then train users to look for one star for low risk sites, two stars for ecommerce and banking stuff.
Actually I can't get a certificate for that domain even from Let's Encrypt. You know why? Because I don't own that domain. But if I did own it, I could buy one for $10/yr from my domain registrar. And... "secure"... You keep using that word. I don't think that word means what you think it means.
> Now I'm going to her and have to explain, that no, things have changed, if you see a green padlock, it no longer means someone at least had to fax some registration papers and pay few bucks so he's traceable.
Things have been changed for a LONG while then. I've been able to get SSL certs with a credit card and no verification outside of an email address from a major vendor since 2009. A wildcard at that.
That they can break TLS. This just makes it computationally harder for them, not impossible.
First of all, TLS has many and growing number of encryption methods and key exchange mechanisms. I have no doubt SOME of those methods are broken or easily broken into. Others are not so easy, and ridiculously computationally expensive to unwind. And there are always better ones being added as they are invented.
Additionally, the more encryption that is out there operating in the field, the more computationally expensive it's going to get to a) find data you're actually interested in, and b) decrypting that data. Casual peeking is no longer viable if EVERYTHING is encrypted, whether it be difficult to break or not. You have to decide what to break into.
NBow I have to explain to her that 'S does not stand for Secure
Of course it stands for "secure". You can rest assured in the comfort that when you type your Paypal password in at https://www.payypall.com/ I or anyone else other than the operators of the scam site are unable to see your password.
Validation of companies was not part of getting an SSL certificate, not until 2005 anyway when the EV certificate was introduced. And it wasn't long after that browsers started displaying EV details differently which is why when I go to https://www.payypall.com/ I see a green lock, but when I go to https://www.paypal.com/ I see "Paypal Inc, [US]" written in the address bar.
There are a number of things wrong in the comments so let's clarify them. There are three types of certificates: Extended Validation, Organization Validation and Domain Validation. The green lock only appears for sites with Extended Validation. Extended validation requires the site owner to prove they are a real company, really do own the name in the domain name, i.e. they are not spoofing something, that the DNS record is correct and that they control the domain. These are usually $250 - $500. Organization Validation has some checks and requires proof of control of the domain. It doesn't give you a green lock. Domain Validation only requires that you control the domain to get the cert. It doesn't give you a green lock. It is valuable in that, it prevents man-in-the-middle attacks and ensures that your communication is encrypted, however you have no assurances as to who is behind the domain. Domain Validation certs are usually free. Let's Encrypt only issues Domain Validation Certificates
There is a list of requirements for CAs to obey for granting certs and they are stringently audited and then the auditors are audited. (and one auditor has failed). The EV audits are extremely thorough. Further any EV certificates that are issued now have to be added to a certificate transparency log https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., so all EV certs that have been issued are publicly viewable and now auditable by everyone. (the log is a merkle tree so inclusion in the tree is easy to find and undetected changes are impossible).
Conclusion: If you are going to a website that you expect to be secure for banking or from a reputable company and the lock isn't green then you are likely visiting a spoofed or compromised page. If you are visiting Joe from down the streets cat pic site a DV cert is good enough.
>Words have meaning
Yes, and you're getting the meaning wrong.
>Secured was never ment to mean 'Encryypted', it was ment 'encrypted and you're talking to who you think you are'
That's still encrypted.
It's not like I ever saw a serious attempt at verification from VeriSign, Thawte, or GoDaddy in the 15 years I had to get code signing certs. It's a racket.
"Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
No. Secured was never ment to mean 'Encryypted', it was ment 'encrypted and you're talking to who you think you are'
And it does 100%. The word "Secure" and the little lock show up when a server proves via the certificate chain that they are who they are addressed in the address bar. Nothing more.
Your problem is you expect the computer to not follow your instruction, but rather interface with your brain. How is the computer supposed to know that when you address www.bankof4merica.com that you didn't actually want to talk to the scammer but actually wanted to talk to www.bankofamerica.com. If you told your mother the little green lock is proof of that, then you have been giving out very poor advice.