The SSL Co-operative: A Member-Controlled Certification Authority

http://www.sslcoop.org/

by SworDsy • 12 years ago

112 84 12 years ago

I'll say the same thing here that I said in a response to the survey: I'd be interested in taking part in a CA co-op that seeks membership/sponsorship to cover its infrastructure costs (including the huge initial cost of becoming an accepted CA), but that does not charge to issue certificates, including wildcard certificates.

Certificates cost approximately nothing to issue, and most of the CA's infrastructure would not need significant scaling with the issuance of more certificates.

Manual validation of human/organization identities (the type that requires reading identity documents, such as for EV) costs money, and that could have associated fees, but it doesn't need to occur on a per-certificate basis. And automatable validation costs nothing.

In particular, wildcard certificates don't need to cost any more than standard certificates, and no-cost wildcard certificates would change the SSL landscape significantly. Today, any service that uses subdomains incurs significant fees to secure those subdomains.

pugz• 12 years ago

That sounds very much like the service that is already offered by StartSSL.com. You pay for identity validation, but you can then create as many regular and wildcard certificates as you wish. It's a superb service.

blibble• 12 years ago

it's a superb service, until you want a revocation, then they try to extort $25/revocation out of you (even if you've been a long term paying customer)

this may be OK if you have only issued one cert, but if you've issued a few hundred (which is the main point of StartSSL: pay once and issue many), then you are SOL unless you can afford to plonk down thousands of dollars.

more here: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140409/11442426859/shame...

the CEO (Eddy Nigg) is similarly patronising over email too.

JoshTriplett3• 12 years ago

I use and like StartCom certificates, but they wouldn't solve this problem. Wildcard certificates should not require identity validation; you should be able to get a domain-validated wildcard certificate for free.

Also, their free certificates expire every year; domain-validated certificates should only require revalidation if the domain changes hands.

0x0• 12 years ago

Do take note that they will reject and/or also refuse renewal if they think the domain whois doesn't exactly identify you, even if you confirm the domain webmaster validation. Lots of hassle if your domains have other entities or business names listed as the whois admin contact.

raving-richard2• 12 years ago

Pretty much what I was thinking. Here's what I almost sent as a response to the survey: This is a brilliant idea. I would pay up to $50 a year for the pleasure of being able to get domain validated SSL certs that are trusted by the major browsers. I would assume that the validation would be via emailing webmaster@domain and making them either respond or click a link or something. That could all be automated couldn't it.

Also, make wildcard certificates for domains available for the same low price, because it shouldn't take any more work should it. If I control example.org, then I think it's obvious that I control www.example.org and slighly-biased.example.org.

But then you have the issue of, if Org A controls com.au, that doesn't mean they control mywebsite.com.au. I don't know how you would automate that issue.

The non-automated stuff, make people pay for it. Seriously.

ehPReth• 12 years ago

Mozilla created https://publicsuffix.org/ - perhaps that could help with com.au vs. example.com.au?

euank2• 12 years ago

Well, one way to automatedly ensure someone controls all the subdomains a wildcard certificate gives would be to ask them to create dns records indicating that. Basically, the CA could say "you want *.example.com, then create a dns txt record at mzzafr2pr.example.com with the following text: F5cbUl7pL2JM7z and click here. We'll get back to you once we see the dns change propagate". If I can create a random subdomain they suggest within a wildcard range, that makes it almost certain I can create every subdomain.

vladd2• 12 years ago

The same issue appears when deciding allowance of cookie share-ability across subdomains.

The solution is called a public suffix list - more information about it is available at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Public_Suffix_List .

womble17• 12 years ago

(I'm the sslcoop.org guy)

That's essentially the model I'm looking to implement. I prefer DNS modification for domain validation, but anything that can be automated will be.

joosters2• 12 years ago

StartCom charges $60 for a wildcard certificate that will be accepted by just about every important browser out there. You might even be able to get them cheaper elsewhere.

There are not any significant costs to obtaining SSL certificates, so a new CA is hardly likely to change the SSL landscape at all.

cs02rm0• 12 years ago

I disagree, I think free would be a significant difference. A low barrier vs. no barrier.

womble17• 12 years ago

(I'm the sslcoop.org guy)

StartCom's $60 wildcard is the cheapest I've ever seen. I'm impressed with StartCom's model overall, and it was a great inspiration to me with the SSL co-op. I feel like the more diversity in approaches there is, the better off the CA ecosystem will be. If nothing else, another voice for sanity in the relevant standards bodies (CA/Browser Forum, for instance) can only be of value.

dspillett3• 12 years ago

$60 for a wildcard certificate

It is $60 for as many as you need, for multi-name certificates too, as long as (presumably, I'd need to recheck the smallprint to remind myself) they are all for you and you aren't signing certificates for others. The fact that they are signed for two years instead of one is handy too.

I've recently signed up for that to get some wildcard+multiname certs mainly for convenience (not having to sign a new cert for every tld/sub-domain combination), and not have s wildcard cert for my vanity domain and one for all the names associated with a project that I'm trying to work on (.domain.net, .domain.com, .domain.co.uk, .domain.uk all in one certificate). Remember before considering this though: there is some extra security in having separate certificates for everything instead of a huge wildcard-for-all arrangement. If you PK for a combined wildcard certificate leaks from any one location any security problems that causes affects every location you have that one certificate in use, so I am trading off a convenience gain against taking a little extra risk.

x1798DE• 12 years ago

There are not any significant costs to obtaining SSL certificates, so a new CA is hardly likely to change the SSL landscape at all.

Well, it'll slightly increase the attack surface against the CA model, so there's the (probably very small) chance that something will go wrong and it will introduce a massive (temporary) hole in TLS, since CA-based trust has a "weakest-link" failure model.

lauriswtf• 12 years ago

With all the cheap SSL providers[0] today, I don't really have an issue buying the certificates anymore. When they used to cost a small fortune, I was really restrained to buy a certificate for every small web project, but now the situation has improved.

[0] https://getssl.me/

dtech2• 12 years ago

StartSSL/Startcom already does not charge for individual (wildcard) certificates, you can request unlimited numbers.

You do pay a $60 fee for identity validation, which is valid for 2 years. You can also have automated validation, but they don't allow wildcard certificates (which I sort-of understand, they do need to make money some way right)

So you get unlimited free non-wildcard certificates or unlimited wildcard certificates for $30/year. Not a bad deal.

dspillett3• 12 years ago

So you get unlimited free non-wildcard certificates

Do note the "no commercial use" clause on the free certificates. Not an issue for any of my uses but it may affect quite a few people. Though I'm not sure how they would enforce this.

Of course if you can't afford $60 for two years for the next grade up, then your commercial venture is probably not a roaring success!

IgorPartola3• 12 years ago

Apparently StartSSL does charge you quite a bit to revoke a free certificate. That bit a lot of people when Heartbleed happened. See https://www.startssl.com/?app=37.

colmmacc• 12 years ago

http://www.cacert.org/ is a similar-ish effort that's been ongoing for quite a long time.

Tomte• 12 years ago

Unfortunately they are so messed up, it isn't even funny.

Honestly, my experiences with CAcert were awful. Pressuring people into signing legal contracts that are just laughably unfair was just one part of it.

They may have been a likable organisation at the begininng (maybe with a penchant for over-the-top policy), but when they realized they wouldn't get into major browsers by default, they tried to get "serious", changing too much too fast and wrecking the whole thing. Without the big result they were hoping for.

CMCDragonkai• 12 years ago

It's sad that debian removed them. I think cacert needs more dedicated governance. If all the money we spent on ssl certificates could be pooled together to create non-profit organisation dedicated to public certificates, it would be awesome! And we could probably get opensource PKI infrastructure.

womble17• 12 years ago

(I'm the sslcoop.org guy)

"If all the money we spent on ssl certificates..."

And thus was sslcoop.org born! I'm not sure what you mean by "opensource PKI infrastructure", exactly, but as a long time F/OSS hacker, I'm definitely planning on putting everything that's developed for the SSL co-op under an open licence.

But the software's the easy bit. The hard part is the work required to define processes and policies, get everything audited, and then getting through the inclusion process for all the browsers. That's what takes somewhat more organisation (and money) than writing some code and running openssl...

meowtaxi• 12 years ago

Am I the only one that finds it hillarious (or troubling) that the SSL cert for this site is for a different host name?

joosters2• 12 years ago

Yes, let's trust these people to run a certificate authority when they aren't competent enough to set up SSL properly on their own site...

womble17• 12 years ago

(I'm the sslcoop.org guy)

Yeah, well, I haven't worked out how to tell nginx to look at the SNI for a HTTPS request and bomb out completely if it doesn't match any SSL-enabled vhost. Unless you've got pervasive IPv6 -- then I can set everything up so manually mangling URLs to use HTTPS doesn't cause problems (there's no links to HTTPS resources on sslcoop.org)...

Turns out the real scarce resource is IPv4 addresses -- but we already knew that. ipv6coop.org, anyone? (grin)

sandGorgon• 12 years ago

if you find a way, could you post a gist here please !!

tombrossman2• 12 years ago

Possibly a stupid question, but why not make whichever vhost is correctly configured for SSL your default? Any traffic will go there unless another match is found. This is what I do to force SSL and redirect anything not matching another vhost.

  Catch-all + HTTP --> HTTPS
  server {
          # Set server name & make it the default for this IP address
          listen 80 default_server;
          listen [::]:80 default_server ipv6only=on;
          return 301 https://EXAMPLE.TLD$request_uri;
  }

Or, rewrite HTTPS to HTTP for that vhost only

  server {
          listen      443;
          server_name EXAMPLE.TLD;
          return 301 http://EXAMPLE.TLD$request_uri;
  }

Mozilla's server-side TLS wiki at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS is the best documentation I've found yet, and includes great examples of complete configs for various servers. Hope that helps.

daveloyall• 12 years ago

Womble, I like your idea and I wish you success. But, it is now constructive feedback time. :)

meowtaxi is sooo right! Seriously, I was going to post the same thing. Sure, I expected an SSL error when I manually switched to the https version of your url, but the specific SSL error I ended up getting reflects really, really poorly on an organization that aims to become a CA.

I did check your FAQ first for some mention of the site's current SSL woes...

leccine5• 12 years ago

NSA, is that you? :) (Thanks for the downvotes in advance)

codezero2• 12 years ago

What about this post makes you think the NSA is or would be involved?

leccine5• 12 years ago

I think the question you should ask yourself is: how is the NSA involved in the currently established CA system? The answer (to your question) is , the very same way. Besides, who does think that having an alternative CA provider is going to change anything? The crypto empowering security nowadays is un-trusted, implementations proven containing backdoors, and on the top of that all the implementations are written in languages that can't be formally verified and there are serious security bugs every other week. Back to the topic, what is this new CA group addressing? Which part of this chain that going to be fixed by any mean with this initiative? I guess the answer is none. :)

michaelbuckbee3• 12 years ago

There's an assumption in this that domain validated certificates can be wholly automated. But, in the same way that spammers seek out open SMTP relays, phishers seek out weak SSL validation systems for use in setting up phishing sites.

CA's currently maintain internal keyword warning systems that flag domain validated requests for manual intervention. Anything that even hints that it is involved with a major company, church, charity, bank or financial institution gets flagged and approved manually.

ademarre2• 12 years ago

Interesting. Perhaps an alternative to the keyword warning system you describe (for SSL certs only) could be to scan the candidate CN for existing SSL certs. If any are found, flag it for manual review, or possibly come up with a proof system whereby the applicant proves he is the holder of the former certificate.

michaelbuckbee3• 12 years ago

The problem is that phishers register sound alike domains like info-secure-apple.com or atlanta-usbank.com, that were completely clean prior to issuance.

DoubleMalt• 12 years ago

A couple of questions:

- Where do you plan to place the infrastructure of the cooperative?

- What is your expected timeline to issue Browser accepted certificates?

- Are you planning to provide an API for signing CSRs?

I am currently working on a solution for self hosted messaging and file synchronization, and your project would complement our efforts to give people the possibility to self-host securely.

womble17• 12 years ago

(I'm the SSL co-op guy)

- Probably in Australia, at least at first, since that's where I'm based. I'd like the DR site to be in Europe, if possible, but that might not be a day 1 achievement.

- I'd like to be able to issue certs from day one of the co-op, via a reseller or other arrangement -- that might cost a few dollars per cert, though. It's a minimum of two years from "let's do this!" to being accepted in all the browsers, though (look at the Mozilla inclusion timeline for an idea of best case: https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA:How_to_apply#Timeline)

- An API is definitely intended from day one. My general architecture for these kinds of systems is API for everyone, and the website just talks to the same API that the general public does.

I'd love to talk to you more about how the co-op could help you with your system.

opendais• 12 years ago

I'm mainly favor in this because I could trust the cooperative more than I trust the existing CAs. As long as it doesn't cost me more than the existing cheapest options [e.g. StartSSL, NameCheap's cheap ssl certs] and had 99.7%+ coverage, I'm 100% sure I'd pay for it.. :)

darrenkopp• 12 years ago

I'm failing to see how this differs from http://www.cacert.org/, though perhaps this would be more strict on participation?

IgorPartola3• 12 years ago

Well, currently CACert certs are not accepted by any major browsers, so while it's a great idea, without funding it's dead in the water.

womble17• 12 years ago

(disclosure: I'm the SSL co-op guy)

CAcert's goal is to issue certificates for free, by implementing an alternate identity validation model. The SSL co-op's goal is to issue a subset of certificates for free, by having those who take advantage of that service share in the costs of running the infrastructure required to do so.

CAcert's determination to stick to its guns on doing everything "on the cheap" is admirable, and I'd quite honestly much prefer it if they succeeded (it'd be a lot less work for me, for one thing). However, looking at the browser inclusion landscape as it currently exists, I have doubts that CAcert has much hope of ever being widely accepted in the browsers. Worse, you can only change the rules about inclusion if you're already in the club... it's a nasty chicken-and-egg problem.

IgorPartola3• 12 years ago

What would make sense to me more than an SSL co-op would actually be a registrar that gives you a free wildcard certificate for every domain you register. You almost always need a certificate for every domain you use, so why not bundle the two? I wonder if doing a crowdsourced bootstrap of such a registrar would work.

womble17• 12 years ago

I'm not averse to that idea, in principle. Heck, that sounds like a nice complementary business idea -- you run a DNS registrar that offers a free domain-validated wildcard certificate with every domain sold, and get your certs from the co-op. The costs would be minimal -- there's bugger-all required to start a domain name reselling business, and SSL co-op membership is shaping up to be more on the "consumer" end, rather than "retailer" cost structure, so there wouldn't be significant costs there, either. I don't think it would need crowdsourced funding to get started, honestly.

The game-changing of the SSL co-op has already started! New business models are taking shape! (grin)

eximius• 12 years ago

I will gladly run a member organization to lower the barrier of entry to end-users and non-businesses. No one should have to sacrifice security because they don't want to fork over that kind of cash.

I run a forum I want Wildcard SSL on but I don't want to buy one since I currently spend no more than $30/year to host it. The Wildcard SSL Cert alone would cost double that at some of the cheapest places.

If I can fix my problem and others, count me in.

womble17• 12 years ago

"No one should have to sacrifice security because they don't want to fork over that sort of cash"

It's a bit long to be the SSL co-op's tagline, but as a motto, you've pretty much hit the nail exactly on the head.

The SSL Co-operative: A Member-Controlled Certification Authority

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