Distrusting StartSSL

https://raim.codingfarm.de/blog/2014/04/12/distrusting-startssl/

by raimue • 12 years ago

27 55 12 years ago

raim.codingfarm.de

hesselink• 12 years ago

They're also not about to change it: https://twitter.com/startssl/status/453631038883758080

paulirish• 12 years ago

Cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:llk9t9Y...

dewey• 12 years ago

Feels a bit silly to complain about a free certificate from the CA which probably helped a lot of people to even think about using SSL on their site and if I'm not mistaken it's just 25$ to get a new one. That's even cheaper than getting one from Comodo/etc. They always said that revoking a certificate is not free, that's what you signed up for.

tptacek9• 12 years ago

It's a silly complaint. It's also the inevitable result of offering something useful at a "free" price point: it attracts pathological customers --- for instance, the ones who will attempt to organize informal boycotts against you when something about that free offering turns out not to be to their liking.

lisper6• 12 years ago

The problem with this analysis, as with most libertarian analyses, is that it ignores externalities. The security of x.509 is a cooperative endeavor. The continued existence of compromised certificates from any CA undermines the security of the entire internet because you can no longer trust the browser padlock icon. So while it is certainly arguable that Start could justifiably refuse to provide a service for customers who have never paid, it is a much harder case to make that Start is justified in undermining the security of the internet because it chose (wisely or unwisely) to provide certificates for free.

guan5• 12 years ago

The $24.90 fee also applies to paying Class 2 customers. Only EV certificates get free revocation from StartCom.

My own personal blog (not very critical) has a Class 2 certificate, and I decided to switch to a Comodo PositiveSSL ($5/year for 5 years) and not revoke the StartSSL one.

pezz• 12 years ago

Exactly what I did.

I mean, damn people who use a free thing that then get screwed, through no fault of their own, not wanting to be charged $25 for a part of the service that they would never need to use otherwise.

You're either free, or you're not -- StartSSL is a mish-mash of "free" and opportunistic costs.

yeukhon5• 12 years ago

I don't see where it said $5/year. Right now it costs $50 per year.

EDIT:

Are resellers like them more trustworthy? I understand that big CA often sells out to smaller CA and smaller CA sell out to even smaller CA. But how trustworthy are ssls.com and namecheap?

EDIT

Okay. I see. namecheap has been running since 2001 which means it has been doing business pretty well :) So why are they cheaper? Because namecheap are the one managing all the accounts and Comondo is only doing validation?

jeremyjh• 12 years ago

I'm really confused. If you think your original certificate may have been compromised, the only reason to get a new certificate would be to protect your users from a MITM attack. Since you have not revoked your old certificate, you have done nothing to reduce this risk.

Joeboy3• 12 years ago

The article is down for me, but:

From a POV of fairness to StartCom, I agree with you, and initially saw it as a ridiculous sense of entitlement on the part of their (non-paying) customers. However as a third party user of the web I am somewhat persuaded by the simple argument that the certs should be distrusted on the basis that they are no longer trustworthy.

Edit: Having thought about it for a minute, a logical consequence of my argument is that all certificates signed by CAs that charge a revocation or reissue fee should be distrusted, which probably makes it not a very reasonable argument. I guess this just leaves us at "Valid SSL certificates are not necessarily trustworthy and we just have to live with that".

Edit2: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2014/04/11/heartbleed-cert...

revelation• 12 years ago

I have no problem with them asking for money to issue a new certificate, but revoking the old one when it is compromised is an obligation they took on when selling (or giving it away) in the first place. An obligation to Mozilla and others that have put them in their trust store if I may add.

It is the same reason we have mandatory recycling provisions. Just because your shit is free doesn't mean we have to sit by and watch you pollute the world.

raimue• 12 years ago

Sorry for the downtime. I did not expect this to be that popular.

zimbatm• 12 years ago

It's a marketing issue.

StartSSL can make free certificates because the entire system is automated (until you require Level 2 certificates) so the cost of operation is very low.

My guess is that the revocation is not entirely automated. There might also be reasons other than technical why it's not the case. In any case, if they explained the reasons it would put some perspective on their point of view and help people understand.

drdaeman3• 12 years ago

just 25$ to get a new one

Due to $0 price of certificate I guess many had considered it would be a good idea to have a certificate per service, i.e. a separate one for HTTPS, email, XMPP and so on. I did. The overall thought was that if one service would be compromised, others would likely remain safe - but Heartbleed had completely changed the story.

In my case if I'd revoke all the certificate it would be about $600. Call me names if you want to, but I'm not going to shell out that much. Guess, many others would think the same.

I've updated OpenSSL but if any certs were compromised, they would stay so until they would naturally expire.

sexmonad• 12 years ago

StartSSL's default usage mode is to generate private keys on their website. Yet another horribly insecure system.

I'd much rather that people used self-signed certs (and browsers had certificate pinning) by default, and could then step up to real CA certificates. Self-signed certs provide almost the same amount of trust that StartCom does.

kmac_2• 12 years ago

StartSSL's default usage mode is to generate private keys on their website.

No. AFAIR they use HTML5 <keygen> tag to generate key pair.

drdaeman3• 12 years ago

That's for personal (client) certificates.

For server certificates, unless you supply the CSR by yourself by skipping a step (IIRC, you're softly encouraged to do so), they generate the key server-side and send it to you back. They even have a FAQ entries (##43,44, although their site is down ATM, so Google for a cached copy) about that.

dfc5• 12 years ago

None of this has anything to do with StartSSL's trustworthiness as a CA. It is ridiculous to see that people are whining that a company that signed their cert for $0.00 is asking for some money for additional work. The $25 rekeying is a steal for a certificate.

What CA in mozilla/chromium comes closest to StartSSL's $0.00 or $25.00 certificate? That question is not rehetorical, I am genuinely curious what is the second cheapest option for a signed certificate (from a CA trusted by default in mozilla/chromium).

yeukhon5• 12 years ago

https://www.gandi.net/ssl/standard#single

$16 per year.

edit

Someone said reseller namecheap and ssls are way cheaper and have the same trust as any CA.

Spidler• 12 years ago

Gandi are free if you have domain hosting with them.

aroch4• 12 years ago

PossitiveSSL2 (Comodo) through a reseller (I use http://cheapsslsecurity.com/ -- $5/year/5years)

dfc5• 12 years ago

I was thinking about the two Comodo RAs (or three?) that had been compromised when I said from a CA trusted by mozilla/chromium:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=470897

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=526560

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=599856

yeukhon5• 12 years ago

EDIT: Okay. Downvoter. Now defend your position.

I think people should clam down and think thoroughly.

I don't know the actual math on the cost for a CA to revoke and re-issue a new certificate. But what if someone finds another critical vulnerability? Do we go back and ask to revoke our certificate again? Free of charge?

Is it necessary to call StartCom evil? Is that even fair?

If you are serving real user data, please get a paid certificate yourself. Why? Because you have slightly better control of your certificate. If you are just running demo or running personal blog then get one from places like gandi.net (1 year at $16.00)

edit: someone mention ssls.com and namecheap.com (resellers) offer cheap Comondo PositiveSSL at less than $10 per year.

If you are running open source project, consider https://www.globalsign.com/ssl/ssl-open-source/ and http://www.godaddy.com/ssl/ssl-open-source.aspx.

If you still can't afford one, I really don't know what to say to you at the moment.

drdaeman3• 12 years ago

@EDIT: Sorry, that was me. I've misclicked the wrong button - meant to upvote, and there seems to be no way to undo. Nonetheless, I disagree.

Do we go back and ask to revoke our certificate again? Free of charge?

That's right, ask to revoke. In current system, considering the position CAs' are in, trust is primarily their problem. If CA's not revoking the certificate that's compromised, it's CA who's to blame, not server administrators. Not sure about server admins who don't want to pay, but end users (those who see the false green padlock) have full moral right to call such CA "evil".

yeukhon5• 12 years ago

Thank you. I think people should try to explain their downvote whenever possible so that I can have a decent discussion as my argument isn't always "correct".

Like I said I don't know the cost to revoke certificate as a CA. One possible defense for StartCom is that they are worried about facing the same bill as the next critical vulnerability emerge. Someone said in some other threads that StartCom has this fee from ancient time. If that's true, this is just another "fine print" issue.

but end users (those who see the false green padlock) have full moral right to call such CA "evil".

I agree. Though the question remains: should the CA take the blame of the flaw of a library every time given CA is not a charity, but a business?

ibejoeb• 12 years ago

Heartbleed is a big deal, and there's not a single entity that can bear the burden alone. We've all got to do our parts to revoke the millions of bad certificates, and we've go to be pretty quick about it.

I'm a StartCom customer, and I'm going to suck it up and pay to revoke all of my certificates, including several class 2s and an EV. I'm going to do it because it's better for the PKI than if I don't.

Now, StartCom, It would be nice if you'd help us out, too. This is a mess. Maybe we can get a bit of a break. Maybe you can revoke all of my certs for $25. Or maybe it can be $5 or $10 a piece. We want to put you out of business, but come on, we all know signing certs is tantamount to printing money. If the trust model falls apart, you're out anyway, so how about playing an active role in sorting this out?

tptacek9• 12 years ago

Very few people will actually have lost privkeys. Patching your server is a much more important countermeasure than revocation. Certificate revocation in practice works nowhere nearly as well as it does on paper; in fact, it comes dangerously close to not working at all. Read Adam Langley's (jaundiced) take on OCSP for more details.

Long story short: certificate revocation is probably not a big enough deal for Start to somehow be required to rewrite the terms you agreed to when you acquired your certs from them.

rentzsch• 12 years ago

I think this is Langley's post tptacek is referencing: https://www.imperialviolet.org/2012/02/05/crlsets.html

Distrusting StartSSL

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