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Re: Russia attempts mandating installation of root CA on clients for TLS MITM


From: Masataka Ohta <mohta () necom830 hpcl titech ac jp>
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2022 00:18:39 +0900

Sean Donelan wrote:

You'll notice there still isn't a CA trust list for use in the USG :-)

It merely means that PKI does not have its own security and relies
on trust for all the CAs (not only the root ones), which means PKI
is as secure as the plain Internet, which is secure if all the ISPs
are TPPs (trusted third parties).

If you can assume all the CAs are TPPs, you can also assume all the
ISPs are TPPs.

About 95% of the TLS certificates globally are ultimately signed by about
six CA organizations depending how you track ownership. (I know, multiple "abouts" in that sentence).  The long tail of global business, means most operating systems ship (or after the installation autoupdate) with 100+ trusted certificate authorities by default.

The number of blindly trusted root CAs is irrelevant because PKI
with just one not-so-trustworthy root CA is bad enough.

PKI is just insecure.

                                                        Masataka Ohta


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