Become an SSLAdmin In a Few Easy Steps 64
Renderer of Evil writes "With news that it is rather simple to mimic authority with many webmail providers in order to coax an SSL certificate authority into creating one for the domain, a Canadian security expert has decided to take it upon himself to see who out there is actually vulnerable and provide information to the public on how prevalent this issue is as we speak. Out of eleven webmail services chosen at random and without prejudice, just under half of them permitted him to register with credentials (ssladmin) that allowed him to create an SSL certificate in their name. In most of these cases, there was a pre-existing, legitimately-acquired certificate."
Update: 04/19 01:30 GMT by S : Kurt Seifried's original paper, on which the BetaNews article is based, provides more detailed information on the subject (PDF).
This is nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
This is nothing new, we've been talking about issues like this since the introduction of SSL. Either you have onerous and thorough verification, which makes SSL a real pain to deploy and discourages adoption, or you have an easy-to-game system that makes SSL less secure. Security always involves lots of effort, and that's simply at odds with the way things are "supposed to work" on the Internet.
Re:The CA's are not doing their due dilligence (Score:2, Insightful)
Correct. He says he's not sure whom to blame.
*I'm* sure whom to blame: the CAs, who are falling prey to the "man who walks in in a UPS uniform" trick.
The LHS of your email address does *not* constitute an authentication scheme, people.
Re:slashdoted already! (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, it's a mystery why you were downmodded.
When will registrar be required to do this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sometimes (Score:3, Insightful)