Cert generation [LWN.net]

Cert generation

Posted Mar 28, 2010 6:28 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091)
In reply to: Blaze: The Spy in the Middle by foom
Parent article: Blaze: The Spy in the Middle

$900 to generate a random prime number, no matter how long, does indeed seem a bit steep. Nowadays even $10 is a ripoff: it takes about 10 seconds of CPU time.

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Cert generation

Posted Mar 28, 2010 6:46 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

to be fair, the cost of the cert is supposed to cover the cost of validating the identity of the person asking for the cert and then to maintain housekeeping things like security, redundancy of the signing key, revocation list, etc.

the thing that makes the $900 so bad is that all of this work needed to be done for th $300 cert as well, the only difference between the $300 and $900 option is a tag inside the cert. Most cert vendors don't have the two grades anymore.

also, since the export browser restrictions were lifted, there really shouldn't be anyone using an 'export browser' that would act any differently with the two types of certs (when was the last 'export' browser shipped?) If anyone is still using such a browser they have so many security holes that downgrading the encryption to 40 bits is a minor risk.

Profit!

Posted Mar 28, 2010 8:11 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

The marginal cost of an additional certificate, in terms of keeping backups and revocation lists and securing master keys is close to zero. Storing and sending 2KB has always been cheap. The only item with an appreciable marginal cost is identity validation, and the validation done by "certificate authorities" is a joke, now as always. Why? Because they are businesses; you just have to follow the incentives.

Imagine the amount of identity validation done by credit agencies such as Visa, or even by banks: they are very superficial. These guys are actually giving you credit, and they will have to pay if you don't. Even so, the amount of validation is (at least here in Europe) hardly worth 10, according to my own estimations. Now what incentives do CAs have to make thorough checks? They are not giving you credit, and they have zero liability if you are not who you claim to be. Therefore it makes good business sense to skim over any ID presented and not think twice about it.