[Dailydave] Open Source CA

Moses Hernandez moses at moses.io
Sun Dec 6 19:58:36 EST 2015


Actually there is a much more interesting thing happening with LetsEncrypt
that I think is lost on many people. The ACME protocol behind it, from my
understanding and from what is listed here (
https://github.com/ietf-wg-acme/acme/blob/master/draft-ietf-acme-acme.md)
will allow us to programmatically interact with the CA (register, request,
renew) our certificates at will. In theory, you could ask for a new
public/private key pair every day, which would be an interesting twist to
someone taking keys as an example. I believe you would still want to enable
PFS but it is considerable that requesting new key pairs adhoc would change
the threat model. It would also bring down the cost of other interesting,
yet expensive items like HPKP (HTTP Public Key Pinning) which would in a
best practice case require 2 keys.

There is also work on certain newer ('hipster?') webservers like Caddy to
be able to natively use ACME and letsencrypt. (https://caddyserver.com/) Of
course, no guarantee in the bug free or security of either systems that I'm
mentioning but it is moving the conversation forward.

-m
@mosesrenegade
moses at moses.io


On Sun, Dec 6, 2015 at 3:11 PM Kristian Erik Hermansen <
kristian.hermansen at gmail.com> wrote:

> It now means that the entire web can move to HTTPS by default and there
> are no excuses for not having an HTTPS certificate any longer. Eg. When you
> type www.whateversite.com into your browser, by default, an HTTPS
> connection can be made instead. Unencrypted HTTP can die now. The issue of
> backdoors in Certificate Authorities still exists though, because nation
> state laws permit gov to obtain CA private keys and perform intermediation.
> Therefore, we also need to ensure public key pinning and validation of
> per-site certificates in order to identify rogue site certificates being
> generated that were not issued by the site itself. Stay safe! :)
> On Dec 4, 2015 8:40 AM, "Charisse Castagnoli" <charisse at charissec.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Because there are many smart people on this list, I ask how would you
>> evaluate this just released tool:
>>
>> https://letsencrypt.org/
>>
>> I'm too old to read source code and cert/key gen is specialized knowledge
>> in any case.
>>
>> Comments?
>>
>> charisse
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