• danpalmer 4 days ago |
    This is a bad look. I expected the result would be Chrome and Firefox dropping trust for this CA, but they already don't trust this CA. Arguably, Microsoft/Windows trusting a CA that the other big players choose not to trust is an even worse look for Microsoft.
    • jsheard 4 days ago |
      What is even the point of a web CA that isn't trusted by all of the major players? Is there one?
      • beeflet 4 days ago |
        I suppose it allows you to enable third party control and censorship. If you look at microsoft's censorship of bing in china for example, they are more than willing to bend the knee if it means they can get ahead.
        • alganet 4 days ago |
          As a brazillian, I find this very unlikely.

          In 2013, when the same party was in power, SERPRO was tasked with replacing Microsoft in key aspects, such as government email (which was handled by Outlook Server at that time) and operating systems.

          The main reason was fear of espionage. So, in reality, we are more afraid of the US spying on us than random internet dissidents.

          • serial_dev 4 days ago |
            As a non Brazilian, sometimes when a government says a company is spying on its citizens, they mean that they want access, too, to the spying and censoring apparatus.
            • alganet 4 days ago |
              I see your point.

              Maybe if I was in government I would think the same. Catch criminals before they act, stuff like that (I'm just being the devil's advocate here).

              This is a dillema, and the worst kind. The kind citizens know nothing about, so the only possible way to talk about it is to speculate. I am, however, too old to speculate about these things anymore.

      • tialaramex 4 days ago |
        These are generally government CAs, so, typically the situation is Microsoft sold the government Windows, and as part of that deal (at least tacitly) agreed to the CA being trusted, and so every system that's trusting these certificates is a Windows PC anyway, running Edge because the whole point was the government will only use Windows and pays Microsoft $$$.

        Why bake it into everybody else's Windows? If you make say a Brazil Government-only Windows which trusts this CA instead, I guarantee somebody crucial in Brazil will buy a 3rd party Windows laptop independently and it doesn't work with this CA's certificates and that ends up as Microsoft's problem to fix, so, easier to just have every Windows device trust the CA.

        They'll have an assurance from the CA that it won't do this sort of crap, and that's enough, plausible deniability. Microsoft will say they take this "very seriously" and do nothing and it'll blow over. After all this stuff happened before and it'll happen again, and Windows will remain very popular.

        • sneak 4 days ago |
          Windows is less popular every year.
          • notimetorelax 4 days ago |
            I looked at the graphs at Statista. I don’t think it’s so clear cut. Mobile OSs have pushed it down, but it seem to dominate PC market. Do you have a graph that shows its decline on computers, not mobile phones? Or in absolute unit counts?
            • flir 3 days ago |
              I think that might be a bit of an unfair caveat. People do real work on mobile OSes. They shop and communicate on mobile OSes, and occasionally organise revolutions.

              (Although I'm not sure why "Netraft confirms, Windows is dying" is a useful comment here anyway. Windows is a behemoth.)

            • lysace 3 days ago |
              https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...

              There's a clear but slow trend on desktop.

              Jan 2009: 95.4% Windows

              Jan 2016: 85.2% Windows

              Jan 2024: 73.0% Windows

              In e.g. US it's going down faster, desktop market share now at 62%:

              https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-st...

          • saghm 4 days ago |
            I feel confident in guessing that any net changes in Windows popularity have close to no relation to Microsoft's policies around trusted CA. The number of users who are worried about sketchy certificates being trusted by default are dwarfed by the number of users who don't have any idea what a "trusted CA" is but care about more "visible" things like UI changes, performance, and how hard Windows is pushing Edge and other things they don't want.
            • l33t7332273 4 days ago |
              It’s not becoming the users that are the decision makers. A few CTOs could make decisions based on this
              • saghm 4 days ago |
                If the rationale in the parent comment for this behavior is correct, it sounds like a lot of people making the decision to use Windows are doing it _because_ of behavior like this, not in spite of it.
          • n144q 4 days ago |
            You need to show statistics to prove that, not just throw the statement out there, possibly only based on the vibes on HN.
        • awinter-py 4 days ago |
          what's the state's interest in having their CA built into windows?
          • tptacek 4 days ago |
            States are themselves extraordinarily large IT enterprises, they generally want control of traffic and its transparency or protection, and they are large enough to get arrangements for that, though usually not this particular arrangement.

            Large enterprises in the US generally have the same capability, but not loaded into operating systems by default (that is: Walmart's ability to do this on its own network in no way impacts you, who have never worked on that network).

            • adra 4 days ago |
              If you're a large enterprise, then it's trivial to add yourself your own custom CA and save the cost/hassle of needing to deal with outside companies. The tradeoff being you need to manage it yourself vs basically paying this third party company to survive?
              • tptacek 4 days ago |
                That's true, but in the bad-old-days of the antidiluvian WebPKI it was somewhat routine to sell big companies CA=YES certs simply to allow them to do this universally without pushing out updates to all their endpoints. It was a terrible, bad practice, and so far as I know it's completely dead now --- except for Microsoft, I guess.
              • hulitu 3 days ago |
                > If you're a large enterprise, then it's trivial to add yourself your own custom CA

                The big CA have their own "Boy club". See Ahmed used cars and certificates.

          • lazide 4 days ago |
            Legitimate, or illegitimate?
          • mnau 4 days ago |
            E.g. identity verification. My state has a "qualified" certificate that can be used to sign contracts and basically everything else you can do in-person. When you can transfer you home with that, there are higher requirements on checking the identity of a person who gets the certificate.

            That CA is not used for much else and is basically confined to our state. But it has to be in Windows, otherwise no other software could verify the signatures.

            See eIDAS and other similar schemes.

            • tsimionescu 3 days ago |
              Why would you want to mix identity verification with the WebPKI? This makes no sense at all. Just because a CA is trusted for web verification doesn't mean it's trusted for identity verification, machine enrollment, or any other purpose. And vice-versa: a CA for identity verification is not in any way trusted for web verification.
              • Muromec 3 days ago |
                I think the idea was to use client certs for strong authentication on the government web services, which didn't rally took off, except maybe in Estonia.
            • Muromec 3 days ago |
              You don't really need your CA doing eIDAS in the system root. This scheme works as a closed system where you need eIDAS app to produce the artifact and another eIDAS app to verify it, when both have their own non-system root.

              Ukraine for example successfully operates their own eIDAS-like scheme where everything is based on DSTU+GOST algos not supported by any operating systems a major libraries, the certs are signed by the government root and it doesn't leak into web pki.

            • estebarb 3 days ago |
              It doesn't have to be. In Costa Rica the Central Bank has their own CA for the same purpose. We need to download the certificates ourselves. It is inconvenient, but an error by that CA won't propagate to the rest of the world.
          • Onavo 4 days ago |
            So they can mitm their own employees without annoying TLS warnings.
            • throwaway2037 4 days ago |
              To be clear, this is bog standard in all mega-corps now. They have a vendor product that provides HTTP Internet proxy, then they perform MitM to decrypt HTTPS traffic and re-sign/encrypt with in-house issued cert. Then, this cert is auto-trusted as part of all base OS installations. To be honest, how else can mega-corps spy on HTTPS traffic without this MitM tactic? I don't know any other way.
              • echoangle 3 days ago |
                Yes, but normally this is done by making your own CA and installing it into your client devices, not by getting it into every device globally by working with Microsoft.
                • hulitu 3 days ago |
                  > Yes, but normally this is done by making your own CA and installing it into your client devices, not by getting it into every device globally by working with Microsoft.

                  Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Cloudfare, Godaddy, Lets encrypt. They all "work with Microsoft".

                  • echoangle 3 days ago |
                    Does any employer get a certificate from any of the CAs you listed to MITM their internal networks?
                    • 3np 3 days ago |
                      The listed companies are employers. I think they all have self-managed CAs.
                      • echoangle 3 days ago |
                        Yes, but surely the listed companies don't use their public and globally trusted CAs to MITM their internal networks. I hope they have another internal CA to allow them to MITM their internal Network.
            • tsimionescu 3 days ago |
              You don't need a publicly trusted CA for that. You just run an internal CA and install its root certificate on your employees' machines, just like you install VPN software or whatever else.
          • csomar 4 days ago |
            So when they issue their certificates, you don't get that huge red banner? I belong to a small developing country and even with its tech illiteracy it has a CA. Now, of course, because that CA is not trusted by anyone, all government websites are red.
          • efitz 4 days ago |
            Getting your CA into a trust store means that every machine using that trust store will accept your certs. It’s not really necessary for a government or corporation to have a public CA in anyone’s trust store unless they want to issue certificates that everyone trusts. If they just need their own machines to trust their certificates, they can use the management utilities that come with Windows and with AD to distribute an “enterprise root”, which only their machines will trust. This is how most large companies and governments do it.
          • tsimionescu 3 days ago |
            So that they don't depend on anyone else to have proper TLS for their state sites and for companies operating in their state.

            Imagine if you don't have a state CA, and your relationship with the USA goes sour, and the USA prohibits all of their major CAs from doing business with your country, including Let's Encrypt. People in your country still use the internet and you still want to protect them from scammers pretending to be local businesses online. So it's important that you as the state can provide CA services and sign those certificates yourself.

            Of course, in this scenario you wouldn't want to be relying on Microsoft to help. But the general principle is that any state who can afford it has a strategic interest in having fully self-sufficient Internet infrastructure, including DNS, CAs, IP allocation etc.

            • withinboredom 3 days ago |
              This seems like a matter of signing a certificate signed by an actual CA with your own CA as well. If the relationship sours, you still have your own CA to vouch for it.
              • tsimionescu 2 days ago |
                That doesn't achieve anything at a country level if trust stores don't include your CA directly. A country can't just push an update to all its citizens' computers to switch CA, it has to plan ahead for such eventualitites.
        • efitz 4 days ago |
          Windows CA program is governed by requirements like any other CA. Microsoft has ways to provision machines with enterprise CA roots so there is no advantage, and highly visible disadvantage, to adding a noncompliant CA to your trust store. I think that the theory that Microsoft will included it to sweeten a sale has no merit, unless you have evidence.

          Most certificate trust stores have some certs in them that are sketchy, eg a bunch of university certs from all over Europe. These are slowly dropping off, presumably because it costs quite a bit to operate a CA in a compliant fashion and get it professionally audited.

          Issuing a fake cert is grounds for removal from every certificate trust program I’m aware of, if it can’t be demonstrated that they found what went wrong and have fixed it so it can never happen again.

          • lokar 4 days ago |
            IMO, issuing a fake CA for one of the top (and highest risk) domains even once should be the end of that CA (and any other CAs managed by that org)
        • amluto 4 days ago |
          The solution seems straightforward: limit the trust in the CA to .BR domains.

          [domain name typo fixed]

          • bitwize 4 days ago |
            .bz is the TLD for Belize. Brazil is .br.
          • kelnos 4 days ago |
            IIRC name constraints is very poorly supported by client software, so there are likely lots of clients out there that wouldn't even parse that restriction out of the cert, and happy accept anything singed by the CA.
            • amluto 4 days ago |
              I’m not talking about a name constraint — that would need to be part of the root certificate. I’m suggesting that MS add a feature to its root store to constrain the usage of the certificates in the store. IIRC Google’s root store has features like this.
              • tsimionescu 3 days ago |
                The Windows trust store doesn't offer a verification API, I believe it simply lists the trusted certificates so that they can be looked up by verification software. That is, OpenSSL doesn't ask windows "hey, is this certificate with this chain trusted for google.com?" it asks Windows "hey, do you have a cert in the trusted root CAs with this ID? If so give it to me", and then OpenSSL will use that root cert to check if this is the real google.com.

                Chrome, which is both the cert store and the client on certain OSs, might implement this limited trust. But Windows can't, except maybe for its own internal services.

                Either way, this makes little sense overall. If a CA is trustable, it can be trusted to sign a certificate for any domain. And if it's not trustable, then you can't trust it for any domain. Brazilian companies wishing to use a local CA can own .com domain names, so you'd be preventing a completely legitimate use case. Google almost certainly has a google.br domain, so if the Brazil CA is untrustworthy, they can still be used to attack Google even if you only trust them for .br domain.

                • nordsieck 3 days ago |
                  > Either way, this makes little sense overall. If a CA is trustable, it can be trusted to sign a certificate for any domain. And if it's not trustable, then you can't trust it for any domain.

                  That's a silly position to take.

                  When I lived with roommates, I trusted them. But I also locked my bedroom when I went out. Because there's no good reason to rely on trust when you don't have to.

                  • tsimionescu 3 days ago |
                    It is given the design of the PKI and DNS. There's no relation between CA and the TLDs on the certificate being signed.
                    • amluto 3 days ago |
                      This is true, but it’s an old design that has been (in my opinion at least) obviously wrong since the very beginning of HTTPS. Microsoft could easily fix it, at least for clients that can manage to use an updated API.
                      • tsimionescu 3 days ago |
                        Microsoft has nowhere near the power to change the PKI and/or DNS. And it's not an API problem, it's a problem of where companies go to get their legitimate certs. If there are a lot of companies getting their certs for international TLDs from country CAs, or country TLDs from international CAs, then you have to wait for huge systemic changes before enforcing any kind of TLD-CA relationship.
                        • account42 2 days ago |
                          Microsoft has absolute power about the restrictions they support in their root store.
                          • tsimionescu 2 days ago |
                            That's irrelevant. My whole point is that such restrictions go against the whole design of the PKI, at a systemic level. It's actively harmful to try to restrict trust in a CA to certificates for a certain TLD, because the two don't have any relationship whatsoever, by design.

                            It would be like restricting trust in a CA to certificates for sites whose name starts with a certain letter. It's exactly as meaningful from a Web PKI perspective.

                            Could Microsoft make it so that Windows only trusts this CA for certificates on domains whose name starts with a "b"? Sure. Would it help with anything? No. Would it be actively harmful to companies whose name starts with A that are using this CA? Yes. The same thing is true for domains whose name ends in .br.

            • 8organicbits 4 days ago |
              I think support for name constraints is much better now, but I think someone needs to correctly audit it. We need near universal adoption for it to be considered a usable tool.

              I researched the issue a little here: https://alexsci.com/blog/name-non-constraint/

            • cvalka 3 days ago |
              As of 2024, they are well supported.
    • beeflet 4 days ago |
      It's not just a bad look, it's bad period.
    • move-on-by 4 days ago |
      Also being issued on a major US holiday- when many are on PTO- does not help with the look.
      • alganet 4 days ago |
        During carnival we brazillians often take 3 or 4 days leave.

        Would it be fair during that time if I asked you to hold your PRs, bug tickets and work in general because we're on paid leave?

        On-call rotation exists for those reasons. Otherwise, all countries would need to respect all other countries holidays.

        In fact, we're not even aware of most US holidays. It is likely to be a coincidence.

        • lmm 4 days ago |
          > Would it be fair during that time if I asked you to hold your PRs, bug tickets and work in general because we're on paid leave?

          Yes. That's completely normal for companies that do business with Brazil.

          • alganet 4 days ago |
            Sorry, my example was bad.

            In fact, your example is perfect. We're not talking about business. CAs are different.

            In security and infrastructure, there's always someone working on holidays. The larger the organization, higher are the chances that some kind of rotation exists.

        • bogota 4 days ago |
          Have you never worked at a multinational company?
          • alganet 4 days ago |
            I did, multiple times with multiple countries. All of them had some sort of call rotation. Someone was always at the helm, _specially_ in infrastructure and security.

            There are whole startups designed to solve this, like PagerDuty.

            I am now very curious to understand where your question comes from. There must be some misunderstanding here. You never went on-call or seen a friend do it?

            • JumpCrisscross 4 days ago |
              > You never went on-call or seen a friend do it?

              Red herring [1].

              OP said it’s malicious or incompetent to release this on a U.S. holiday weekend. You asked if similar consideration would be given to Brazil. Multiple people chimed in that it would. You’re now pivoting to on-call capacity.

              Any amount of on-call capacity can be saturated. That’s why competent multinationals avoid releasing while markets they’re likely to impact are sleeping or drunk. This is a high-level scheduling operation, however, so it’s reasonable for those lower in the organisation to be unaware why an update is being pushed next Tuesday instead of this.

              [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring

              • alganet 4 days ago |
                You can totally ignore the red herring and focus on the first part. In the end I was just paraphrasing the comment I replied to.

                Rotations exist, specially in large organizations, or when there's shared responsibility.

                Now we're talking nonsense about "you said, he said", this conversation makes no sense. I am much less invested in this than you think.

                • JumpCrisscross 4 days ago |
                  > Rotations exist

                  Straw man [1]. Nobody claimed otherwise.

                  Rotation or always-on isn’t a substitute for being aware of your customers. Good culture permeate this throughout the organisation. Competent ones have someone at the top ensuring controls are followed.

                  [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

                  • alganet 4 days ago |
                    Sorry, I lost the track.

                    Can you explain the point you made precisely, in the context of the original subject?

        • noirbot 4 days ago |
          For as big a country as Brazil? Totally. I've worked at companies that had minor code freezes for all sorts of holidays in countries we had a big client presence in, specifically to avoid releasing changes to client that wouldn't have engineers in-office to adapt to them.
        • JumpCrisscross 4 days ago |
          > we're not even aware of most US holidays

          You’re not. Someone above you should be. Otherwise that’s incompetence.

        • move-on-by 4 days ago |
          My comment is not about how all work should stop during US holidays.

          What I’m attempting to refer to, is that _if_ this was done with malicious intent, then maybe the hope was that doing it during a holiday would reduce response time or allow it to fly under the radar. Of course, as you say, just because it was a holiday does not inherently mean it’s malicious, it has plausible deniability.

          • alganet 4 days ago |
            What I actually said is that I believe that the notion of a holiday "hiding" these activities is naive. I don't think it makes any difference.

            I don't know if there's a rotation or another system. I think there are probably multiple across different parties responsible for maintaining CA trust.

    • lokar 4 days ago |
      Microsoft is all about bad looks
    • raincole 4 days ago |
      How bad is it? (Genuine question from me who lacks cybersecurity knowledge)
      • retrodaredevil 4 days ago |
        Let's assume that some malicious third party has control of the certificate that was created by this fishy CA. The main attack that they could carry out is a man in the middle (MitM) attack. This attack requires this malicious third party to be able to intercept and change the contents of requests being sent to google.com and someone's web browser.

        A MitM attack can be easily carried out by someone in control of an ISP, or someone in control of a WiFi network. So, if you trust your ISP and your WiFi network, realistically you have nothing to worry about.

        The reason that this issued certificate could allow an attack like this to happen is because all websites nowadays use HTTPS connections, and certificate authorities are the entities that tell your web browser that certain certificates are legit. They confirm that a website is actually that website.

        If you visit some website and someone tries to do a MitM attack between your web browser and that website, the web page should fail to load because if they try to change the certificate, your web browser should reject it because it is invalid.

      • bawolff 3 days ago |
        Well now that everyone knows about it, its a whole lot less bad.

        The bad certificate was caught, and caught quickly. The system works.

        It is a bit like if airport security catches someone who wanted to bomb a plane. Yes the immediate gut reaction is that is terrible, but if you think about it for a bit its actually reassuring, since its proof the safe guards worked.

    • justinclift 3 days ago |
      > an even worse look for Microsoft.

      Microsoft have a terrible reputation for security, which they've earned through doing stuff like this.

      It's not likely to get any better any time soon either, as their trajectory is still pointed downwards.

      • danpalmer 3 days ago |
        I don’t know enough to comment on that reputation, but this surprises me. They’re known for being great at serving and selling to the enterprise, frequently at the expense of end users, and big enterprises/govts care a lot about security usually. Even if much of that caring is box ticking rather than actually looking into the security (hello ISO27001), you’d expect it to result in generally a security conscious culture.
        • outworlder 3 days ago |
          It's hit and miss.

          They have one of the largest cyber security operations worldwide and regularly track and dismantle criminal operations. There's some great people working there.

          Then there's Azure. Which is used by large organizations and you would expect it to have the utmost care when it comes to security. But it often does badly, in several instances it allowed different tenants to access information from one another, something unheard of on AWS. For example: https://www.securityweek.com/microsoft-patches-azure-cross-t... or https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/05/tenable_azure_flaw/ or https://borncity.com/win/2023/08/03/microsoft-as-a-security-...

          There are so many cross tenant vulnerabilities that there could be some overlap in those URLs, and it's a bit late at night for me to read those carefully, but you get the idea.

          They do get the most flak about Windows, which used to be a non networked, single user OS.

        • cassianoleal 3 days ago |
          > Even if much of that caring is box ticking rather than actually looking into the security (hello ISO27001), you’d expect it to result in generally a security conscious culture.

          If the whole value is in ticking the box, why would that develop a culture that values anything more than the tick?

          • antonvs 3 days ago |
            The cycle usually goes something like box ticking, complacency, security scare, remediation, rinse and repeat.
        • justinclift 3 days ago |
          > but this surprises me

          Unfortunately, it's true. People used to relying on Microsoft understandably don't want it to be so, so they're in for a rough time trying to figure out actually workable alternatives. :(

          This has been an ongoing problem for years, and every time some new problem is found Microsoft just trots out the PR promises that they'll do better. Without then doing any better.

          https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/10/how-a... (2022)

          https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/08/microsoft-cloud-sec... (2023)

          https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/04/micro... (2024)

          For the US government's official perspective on Microsoft's security competence, there's the federal Cyber Safety Review Board report released in April this year:

          https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-04/CSRB_Review... (2024)

            "Throughout this review, the board identified a series of
            Microsoft operational and strategic decisions that collectively
            points to a corporate culture that deprioritized both enterprise
            security investments and rigorous risk management," the report
            reads.
          
          And so on.

          Note that the problems didn't start in 2022, that's just the earliest I could be bothered looking with minimal effort. ;)

        • Muromec 3 days ago |
          That's the problem, the only security culture it produces is thinking of security as annoying box ticking.
        • jajko 3 days ago |
          Company pushing constant snooping of all activity of users even on professional/enterprise variants of their OS can't be taken seriously re security, so absolutely no idea where this rumor 'They’re known for being great at serving and selling to the enterprise' comes from.

          They may be good when luring in customers, but once thats done, they don't give a fuck about anything but their current cash flow. And the fact that ultra-big players can ask them for customized OS distribution that has this turned off (just like my own mega corporation) doesn't change anything on statements above.

      • tptacek 3 days ago |
        This is something people on message boards believe that practitioners roll their eyes about.
    • jowea 3 days ago |
      Funny thing is this is just the latest issue around this CA. For a long time you had to manually add it to certificate store because it was not trusted by default but the Brazilian government insisted in using it on official websites.
  • noitpmeder 4 days ago |
    Not clear (to me) in the original post -- was this done accidentally or intentionally?
    • fguerraz 4 days ago |
      Carelessly is the answer
    • ruined 4 days ago |
      does that matter?
      • altairprime 4 days ago |
        Yes; malice is indefensible no matter the circumstances, mistakes may be defensible under certain circumstances or with certain responses by the mistakee.
        • sabbaticaldev 4 days ago |
          as a brazilian i’m not sure if I’d prefer it to be malice or incompetence
          • griomnib 4 days ago |
            As an American…why not both?
          • lazide 4 days ago |
            There is also the option of malicious incompetence, of course.
          • altairprime 4 days ago |
            Incompetence: operating a CA is difficult enough that sometimes people fuck up, but if the CA is corrupted, then that’s much worse.
    • tptacek 4 days ago |
      The certificate was registered in CT, so a reasonable assumption would be that this was accidental, because it was guaranteed to be noticed and to generate drama that would threaten the capability they arranged, presumably at some significant expense.
      • px43 4 days ago |
        What is CT here? Central Time? Connecticut? Maybe Certificate Transparency? I guess that last one might make the most sense. Abbreviations are hard.
        • FergusArgyll 3 days ago |
          Computed Tomography?
        • bart__ 3 days ago |
          Certificate Transparency, all CA's log their issued certificates to central log servers, managed by Cloudflare, google etc. If this is not done, the certificate will not be seen as trusted by Browsers. It was designed to have a publicly auditable source of issued certificates, exactly so we can notice rogue google.com certs.
          • tialaramex 3 days ago |
            Technically you don't have to log certificates during issuance, and actually doing so is slightly more trouble (because of a chicken & egg problem, you want the log proof in the certificate, so you must log special "poisoned" certificates to get that proof and then fasten that proof to the certificate.

            A customer can take an unlogged cert, log it themselves, and then use the certificate and the separate proof of logging they received and use that just fine. Google have some services which do this. One clever thing this enables is you can buy the cert secret-product-name.example, unlogged, build the web site, check everything works, and log the certificate seconds before the product launch event, so snoops can't tell your new product is secret-product-name until the moment you announce it, yet the site works immediately. I have very rarely seen this done but it's possible. When there's an ordinary White House transition process both plausible transition site certs get logged, even though in practice one of those sites is never published. Since Trump I have no idea if this process is so smooth any more.

            A CA can choose whether to have this "issue unlogged certs" process as something they offer, it's a niche thing, but it could make sense. They need to keep adequate records of every certificate they issue (that's required) and logging is a very easy way to satisfy that requirement, but it's not the only way.

            In practice, the logged certificates are the easy consumer option, like selling ready-to-eat food in a deli. Some customers might be prepared to buy ingredients and go away to make food, but, many customers probably want to eat food immediately so for extra money you sell products that can just be eaten immediately. So, yes, the vast majority of certificates issued every day are indeed logged immediately so as to provide the product people want.

          • probstal 3 days ago |
            Actually, it won't be trusted by most browsers. As of today, Firefox hasn't implemented it yet [0]

            [0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1281469

    • woodson 4 days ago |
      As a CA, how does one accidentally issue a certificate for google.com? I mean, is there a scenario that isn't malicious?
      • tptacek 4 days ago |
        Yes, if the interception system involved was meant only for resources within Brazil’s own agency networks.
        • lxgr 4 days ago |
          But that's not allowed for publicly trusted roots under any circumstances, right? Not sure if that would qualify as an accident.
          • foota 4 days ago |
            I think the parent is saying that if they meant to use the cert only internally (e.g., to monitor employees) then that would arguably not be malicious.
            • lxgr 4 days ago |
              Not malicious, but also not exactly purely accidental, i.e. as part of some otherwise totally legitimate activity.
              • foota 3 days ago |
                I think the accidental part would be in the scope. I'm not an expert on these things, but they could have intended to create a self signed cert only valid within the scope of their IT, but accidentally created one from their CA.
            • grayhatter 4 days ago |
              > (e.g., to monitor employees) then that would arguably not be malicious.

              If only there was a way to monitor company equipment without issuing a cert for a public 3rd party.

              • switch007 3 days ago |
                AI screen monitoring right
            • tptacek 4 days ago |
              It would not be malicious. I don't think there's a serious argument here (bearing in mind that in the airless vacuum of a message we can, of course, argue anything).

              I don't know that's what happened here, though; there are malicious possible explanations!

              • foota 3 days ago |
                I largely agree, although I think there's some part of a slippery slope specifically when it comes to government, since you could argue that a government monitoring its citizens is also not malicious since (in a democratic society) the government derives its mandate from the people.

                This isn't too different from the argument that (I believe reasonably) applies for how a company has the right to monitor employees, but I think many people are opposed to even democratic governments monitoring people and would consider such use malicious.

                So a government monitoring its employees is one step closer even than a company, since it's the same organization in this case (though again, I think it's largely reasonable for a government to monitor their employees).

            • JumpCrisscross 4 days ago |
              > if they meant to use the cert only internally (e.g., to monitor employees)

              Or to redirect to an internal, no doubt pitched as more secure, search engine.

        • 8organicbits 4 days ago |
          Note that this scenario happened for ANSSI and MCS Holdings, so there would be precedence. I'm eager to see what Google concludes this time.

          https://security.googleblog.com/2013/12/further-improving-di...

          https://security.googleblog.com/2015/03/maintaining-digital-...

      • Thaxll 4 days ago |
        You know testing stuff like example.com ...
      • tialaramex 3 days ago |
        Most Certificate Authorities have manual issuance†, at least as an option. There's a UI where an authorized employee can issue whatever they want, the UI may be fairly crude or something quite polished used in ordinary business processes.

        So an employee can type in google.com and check any boxes about did you verify this is the correct name and it's OK to issue, and then they hit issue and the certificate is minted, just like that.

        Why google.com? Well, if you're testing something, say a web browser, what web site comes to mind? Maybe google.com? Doesn't work. Oh - the cable is unplugged. Doesn't work. Wait, this checkbox isn't checked, try again. Aha, now it works... Oops we issued a certificate for google.com

        This is a "Never" event, there should be countless things in place to ensure it doesn't happen. In practice, just like safety guards on dangerous machinery, too many people just can't be bothered with safety, it's a cultural issue.

        † Let's Encrypt famously does not. As part of the Mozilla application process they need to show their certificates expire properly, usually people either manually issue a back-dated certificate which has expired already, or they manually issue one with a deliberately short lifetime to expire. Since they can't issue manually Let's Encrypt obtained an ordinary certificate from their own service and then waited ninety days for it to expire like a fucking boss.

  • cjalmeida 4 days ago |
    It gets worse. ICP-Brasil, the AC mentioned in the bug reports, the the government run agency responsible for all things related to digital signatures. Digitally signing a contract, a deed, accessing tax returns…
    • layer8 4 days ago |
      Unlike web browsers, digital signature use cases should perform revocation checks, so revoking the google.com certificate should solve that.
      • perching_aix 4 days ago |
        I think the current "meta" is CAA records? https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-certificate-pinning-is-outda...
        • 8organicbits 4 days ago |
        • syncsynchalt 3 days ago |
          CAA records rely on the CAs to respect them, and this is an article about how a CA has issued a cert in violation of a CAA record.
          • perching_aix 3 days ago |
            Oh right, for some reason I was under the impression that browsers utilize the record too.
      • lxgr 4 days ago |
        The problem here isn't really that one mis-issued certificate, but rather the general problematic behavior of that CA reported in TFA.

        If a CA can be convinced to issue a server certificate for google.com, would you feel very comfortable trusting their contract/deed/... signing certificates?

        • Muromec 3 days ago |
          If the government says you need to use their CA, you may feel the feelings, but you will still use them
          • KetoManx64 2 days ago |
            What would stop me from purging all this CA's certificates from my computet?
      • bawolff 3 days ago |
        Just need to DoS the revocation server right before your digital signature is checked.
    • justinclift 3 days ago |
      So you're saying it's only a matter of time until they issue a cert for x.com as well? :)
  • sabbaticaldev 4 days ago |
    Can someone explain what could be done with that and by whom?
    • tptacek 4 days ago |
      Microsoft appears to have arranged with the government of Brazil for one of their national CAs to have the ability to mint arbitrary certificates. Only Microsoft's own WebPKI software cares; Chrome, Safari, and Firefox don't trust this CA.
    • 77pt77 4 days ago |
      Whoever has the private certificate can pretend to be google.com to people using windows.

      The brower (possibly only edge) and system would show the connection as being secure.

    • woofcat 4 days ago |
      Whomever has this fake certificate can run a server and say it's google.com and windows will say "yep you are" with the little green lock.
      • bufferoverflow 4 days ago |
        The certificate is for a specific IP address, no?

        And without DNS pointing google.com to that IP address, it's pretty useless.

        • zer0x4d 4 days ago |
          Nope, certificates are issued for CNs(Common Name), also known as FQDNs (Fully qualified domain names). Something such as *.google.com, not IP addresses.

          If they were issued for IP addresses they would have to reissue the certificate every time they spun up a new server. Also it's why if you spin up another server and make DNS point google.com to that server, it would not pass verification since the certificate you will be using on that server is not issued to *.google.com, but rather some other domain you own. The IP address plays no role in certificates.

          • buzer 4 days ago |
            Certificates can be issued to IP addresses (at least on SAN level, not sure if they are allowed in CN in CA/B baseline requirements), like https://crt.sh/?id=15492507462
            • Arrowmaster 4 days ago |
              That is different in context to what was being asked though.
          • colanderman 4 days ago |
            Nit: a CN (stored in the Subject field of a cert) is not an FQDN, though historically web browsers treated them as such. This practice is now deprecated. Modern practice is for the domain name(s) to be placed in the Subject Alternative Name (SAN) field.

            The Subject field is not consulted so long as the SAN field is present, and can in theory be any X.500 Distinguished Name, of which Common Name is one possible attribute, which may be any freeform string of a limited length (though it is typically set to the primary domain the cert is issued for, for easy identification).

        • echoangle 3 days ago |
          > And without DNS pointing google.com to that IP address, it's pretty useless.

          On the internet itself maybe, but you can still MITM people on some network, right?

      • baobabKoodaa 3 days ago |
        Where? In Edge you mean?
        • echoangle 3 days ago |
          And everything that uses the OS trust store, when run on Windows, I assume.
    • brianpan 4 days ago |
      It's not entirely about this particular certificate (although this is bad, too). This is about a certificate authority giving someone who is NOT Google, a certificate that can be used to "prove" a server is Google. Accidental or not, this should not happen.

      The "blast radius" is limited to Microsoft since they are the only ones that trust this particular certificate authority. Your non-Microsoft browser won't trust these certs. Your non-Microsoft OS, Java program, etc. etc. won't trust these certs.

  • resters 4 days ago |
    The simple solution would be to have independent entities offer trust assertions about CAs and to allow users to consider multiple entities' views in their decision about whether to trust. It's surprising this doesn't exist yet when the attack vector is so clear.
    • tptacek 4 days ago |
      This is something more akin to a client software bug than a WebPKI issue. Any alternative PKI scheme you could come up with would still be subject to Microsoft cutting deals.
      • silotis 4 days ago |
        With DNSSEC + DANE Brazil would not have needed to make any deal with MS to be able to issue certs for .br domains and they would not have been able to issue a cert for google.com.

        Admittedly DNSSEC has issues to put it mildly, but it does serve as a counterexample to your claim.

      • 8organicbits 4 days ago |
        Can you explain?

        I think the parent is suggesting that users should be able to tune their trust stores. I'd imagine that trusting only the CAs that are in all the major trust stores (Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Apple) would be a reasonable policy. Few websites would choose a CA that falls outside that group.

        • tptacek 4 days ago |
          Users can tune their own trust stores.
          • 8organicbits 4 days ago |
            Is there a way to do it that isn't tedious? I'm not familiar with tooling beyond the UI browsers offer, which doesn't match the experience I was trying to describe.
            • salawat 3 days ago |
              I mean... It's as easy as getting SSL certs and importing them into a trust store/adding them to a directory.

              The hard part is getting the people you want to establish a trust relationship with to give you a copy of their key. Web of Trust was the answer to logistical key distribution problem. The idea being there would be an organization that would vet people and vouchsafe their cryptographic material for everyone else.

              The problem of course, is that the more invisible this is to users, and the more unintuitive the actual mechanics, the more valuable cracking the CA's becomes for hostile actors because of the ensuing blast radius compared to the boast radius that would result from theoretically getting the practice of key exchange in the public, and getting them to internalize the act of creating their own trust networks.

              Of course, if you have dreams or fantasies of being able to control people, none of the work that goes into educating the populace is ever going to be endorsed, because once everyone realizes that they can at least assure their own safety by not delegating their cryptography, the entire idea of eacesdropping as a third-party by tapping the line is unmade. Which is not a popular state of affairs universally.

              • 8organicbits 3 days ago |
                Web of trust is way more ambitious than what I'm talking about. Key distribution for the Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Mozilla trust stores is already a solved problem and works well at scale already.

                However, if you don't trust the inclusive nature of Microsoft's trust store and prefer Chrome's, there should be a tool to swap out trust stores. I don't think such a tool exists yet.

                • resters 3 days ago |
                  Right. I'm imagining a tool that would let users impose choices such as the following:

                  - Accept any certs trusted by Bruce Schneier unless they are not trusted by tptacec

                  - Do not accept new certs for top 1000 domain names unless they are over 7 days old and trusted by the Mozlla Foundation

                  Various experts could create the rules they use to decide which certs or CAs they trust and users could decide which high profile authority figures or institutions they want to trust. One example might even be "Bruce Schneier paranoid version"

                  I think this doesn't exist because of the following:

                  1) technically it is possible to do it today with the existing tools, even though nobody does it

                  2) the negative impact of trusting certs one shouldn't is low for the average user

                  3) sophisticated users already take precautions and are rarely fooled

                  I think for something like this to work it would have to be extremely simple. Surely there would be the same phenomenon as "Dr. Oz" in the realm of cyber secruity. Maybe the 'Kevin Rose settings" would be popular, etc. But that would still open the door to distributed trust which is an improvement over blanket trust of large corporate entities.

            • dadrian 2 days ago |
              The next version of Chrome introduces a whole UI for this at chrome://certificate-manager.
    • will4274 3 days ago |
      It'd be a simple enough browser plugin to build - a tool that checks multiple trust stores when rendering a page. Probably it already exists.

      The problem is between the keyboard and the chair. Users struggle to understand SSL already. Browsers decided that the distinctions between EV, DV, and OV were too complex and hid them. What will your grandmother think when she opens up her bank and your browser plugin shows a greenish yellow trust indicator because the cert is trusted by Google, Apple, and Microsoft, but not Mozilla?

      Unfortunately, trust is binary. Your grandmother click on the bank bookmark and either sees her banking websites or sees a scary warning.

  • leonidasv 4 days ago |
    ICP-Brasil officially stopped emitting public-facing SSL/TLS certificates in October: https://www.gov.br/iti/pt-br/assuntos/noticias/indice-de-not...

    This is pretty bad. Someone circunvented the ban on emitting public certificates but also disrespected Google's CAA rules. Hope this CA gets banned on Microsoft OSes for good.

    • march_happy 3 days ago |
      Checked certlm.msc, a hot fix seems to be already pushed as I can't see ICP Brasil under Trusted Root Certification.
  • 8organicbits 4 days ago |
    Microsoft seems to be casual about trusting CAs, isn't transparent in their inclusion decisions, and their trust store is quite large. Any reasonable website would only use a certificate trusted by a quorum of browsers (especially Chrome), so the benefit of the extraneous CAs seems low.

    I'm not a Windows user, but I have to wonder if there's a way to use the Chrome trust store on Windows/Edge. I can't imagine trusting Microsoft's list.

    • lokar 4 days ago |
      They are not transparent because it is based on enabling sales.
    • throwaway2037 4 days ago |

          > Microsoft seems to be casual about trusting CAs
      
      Woah, that is a bold statement. Classic HN overreach. I am not here to shill for MSFT, but, in terms of OS sales to gov'ts, no one else has nearly the same level of experience. I am sure that MSFT carefully vets all CA additions.

      Are you aware of the big hack on Netherlands govt-approved CA? Read about: DigiNotar. My point: That was a widely trusted CA that was hacked after the root CA cert was added to most browsers / OSes trust stores. So would you say that MSFT was "casual" about trusting DigiNotar root CA? How about Mozilla Firefox? I doubt it.

      • 8organicbits 4 days ago |
        I'm very aware of DigiNotar, I wrote a blog post last year that discusses DigiNotar and even mentions Brazil/ITI [1].

        A challenge for Microsoft is that they aren't transparent in their inclusion decisions, so we can only speculate why they chose to trust this CA. What gives you confidence that Microsoft is doing careful vetting?

        In stark contrast, Mozilla publicly and extensively documented why they didn't trust this CA [2].

        [1] https://alexsci.com/blog/ca-trust/

        [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=438825

        • eschatology 3 days ago |
          That bugzilla thread was quite a read! Thank you for sharing
      • anothernewdude 4 days ago |
        > I am sure that MSFT carefully vets all CA additions.

        I'm sure that Microsoft carefully ensure they're paid for all CA additions.

        Given their monopoly there is no incentive for vetting.

        • tialaramex 3 days ago |
          I'm pretty sure there isn't a fee. Somebody from ISRG (the people who brought you Let's Encrypt) might be able to state categorically that there was no fee charged by Microsoft, obviously it's not free in practice to spin up a decent Certificate Authority, but that's not the same thing as Microsoft charging a fee.

          For these government CAs my expectation is that they're a sort of quid pro quo and (wrongly) not seen as a security problem.

      • cookiengineer 4 days ago |
        You are comparing a non publicly available trust chain (Microsoft's) with a public and transparent one (Mozilla's/Linux Foundation's) [1]

        I don't see any reproducible builds for Microsoft Edge. Therefore, your statement is an assumption and nothing more. We can not trust Microsoft more because they are more proprietary.

        [1] https://www.ccadb.org/

      • lelandbatey 3 days ago |
        > ... In terms of OS sales to gov'ts, no one else has nearly the same level of experience. I am sure that MSFT carefully vets all CA additions.

        I don't think those two things have anything to do with each other. Living in Redmond for my entire life has mostly shown me that MS owns one of the best and most lucrative sales orgs and sales channels in the world. That sales channel means they can sell to governments better than nearly anyone one the planet, no matter what their security practices are like.

      • tialaramex 3 days ago |
        > I am sure that MSFT carefully vets all CA additions.

        Are you? Why? For Mozilla the vetting process takes place in public, that's one purpose of m.d.s.policy so we can see what is or is not done and draw our own conclusions.

        Each of the proprietary trust stores has an opaque process which unless you're a CA applicant you don't even know what they're asking for, much less what (if anything) they do with it.

        These are for-profit companies, and this is a cost centre. The cheapest possible thing they could do is piggy back entirely on the public Mozilla process (which of course for this CA would mean rejecting)

        The next cheapest option would be to allow senior management to override Mozilla's decisions for, you know, commercial reasons.

        And yes, it would certainly be possible for them to have their own teams every bit as effective as the public process but entirely made up of employees and contractors. Weirdly though, although it's easy to run into people who worked for say, the Windows OS team, or XBox team, or Azure team, you don't run into ex-Microsoft opaque CA process people. One reason might be that they're all career professionals, never leave, never get downsized, maybe there are dozens of them. But the more likely reason is they do not exist.

  • knowitnone 4 days ago |
    "Windows users deserve better!" As if Microsoft cares about their users. But this is clearly negligent behavior and open to lawsuits..hopefully.
  • connor11528 4 days ago |
    this is an issue with companies being too big
  • xyst 4 days ago |
    So an incompetent CA is trusted by an even more incompetent company, Microsoft?

    Is anybody else surprised at this point?

    • ed_mercer 4 days ago |
      Microsoft is many things but not incompetent.
      • tylerchilds 4 days ago |
        wealthy and strategic can cover up a lot of incompetence
      • cookiengineer 4 days ago |
        From a security standpoint that's debatable.

        Multiple RCEs and critical CVEs cannot be fixed because Microsoft "lost" the source code. So they disclosed those RCEs but without any solution or fix.

        (Not kidding, sadly, look it up, there also have been occasional binary patches because of the same reason)

        [1] https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide

        • echoangle 3 days ago |
          Do you have a link for the „lost sourcecode so we won’t patch“ claim? The link you gave just gives me a long list of patches.
          • cookiengineer 3 days ago |
            CVE-2017-11882 and the NTLM relay attack come to mind, for example. Down the line they weren't actually fixed, and are continuously being used by a lot of ransomware / malware campaigns.

            I remember some Windows Fax Service related CVEs and some Wi-Fi drivers that couldn't be fixed directly, too, but don't remember the CVE or whether that was related to the Broadcom driver/module sideloading fuckup.

            > The link you gave just gives me a long list of patches.

            The link I gave you is the only disclosure/advisory page that Microsoft offers, don't blame me for them not offering a better UI. Ask them to do better.

            - https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2017-11882

            - https://blog.0patch.com/2017/11/did-microsoft-just-manually-...

            - https://cert.europa.eu/publications/security-advisories/2022...

            • will4274 3 days ago |
              > CVE-2017-11882 and the NTLM relay attack come to mind, for example. Down the line they weren't actually fixed, and are continuously being used by a lot of ransomware / malware campaigns.

              Your own sources indicate CVE-2017-11882 was fixed in November of 2017. The title of the blob.0patch.com article is

              > Did Microsoft Just Manually Patch Their Equation Editor Executable? Why Yes, Yes They Did. (CVE-2017-11882)

              clearly indicating that Microsoft fixed the issue, contrary to your statement that they 'weren't actually fixed". The body content is consistent.

              > NTLM relay attack

              NTLM is bad, no question. It's based on a bad threat model - it assumes network admins can secure their corporate networks. Microsoft also fixed most of the issues in NTLM with NTLMv2 back in the Windows Vista and Windows 7 era. And Microsoft announced they will disable all NTLM versions by default within the Win11 lifetime. The biggest problem (unsurprisingly) is non-Microsoft software which has hardcoded the use of NTLM. It's fair to criticize Microsoft here for making available a technology that required so much from corporate network admins and leaving it available (and with use in Microsoft products) for so many years. At the same time, it's misleading to characterize these problems as "weren't actually fixed" - concrete issues with NTLM within its security model _were_ fixed and new technologies were created with better security models.

              - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windows-itpro-blog/...

              > The link I gave you is the only disclosure/advisory page that Microsoft offers, don't blame me for them not offering a better UI. Ask them to do better.

              You're mistaken. Microsoft has deep links for each CVE.

              - https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-20...

              • cookiengineer 3 days ago |
                Your definition of "fixed" seems to be different than mine. Can't fix a broken architecture if Microsoft is not willing to replace it while also deprecating the old ways. If you want to move the goal post to "my computer is connected to the internet, so it's my fault" then sure, whatever. I still think that Microsoft didn't fix the issues at hand, and kerberoast problems and NTLM problems alone are beyond human knowability. That's why they are so feasible as an attack surface, especially on Azure with its cross-tenant problems, which kind of implies that Microsoft themselves cannot manage NTLM correctly.

                I'll just leave this here, a month old (Oct 2024) because you seem to critize my old examples [1]. You can also google for "malware NTLM relay attack" and you'll find plenty of other examples.

                PS: I also want to add that I won't collect 100s of CVEs for some random person online. I got better things to do than to convince people to ditch Windows. If you want a dossier and analysis, pay us and we'll make a contract for it.

                If you want a better vulnerability database, we'll have that available as a product :)

                [1] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/exploit-relea...

        • meiraleal 3 days ago |
          > From a security standpoint that's debatable.

          still not incompetence if what they gain from it is bigger than what their customers lose, unfortunately.

      • ikekkdcjkfke 4 days ago |
        Then willfully negligant
  • coretx 4 days ago |
    Does anyone have a list of state ( associated ) CA's so that I can ditch them all ?
    • 8organicbits 3 days ago |
      I built a partial list last year [1]. It's challenging to decide which CAs are government operated or controlled: the names don't always make it clear, private companies may operate under government direction, law may require CAs to follow government requests. These were all very clearly government/military organizations running CAs. The Brazilian CA referenced here is number two on the list.

      [1] https://alexsci.com/blog/ca-trust/#government-control-of-cas

  • II2II 4 days ago |
    Tangentially related:

    The system is deeply flawed, which is something I realized fifteen years ago when I was put into a situation where I had to use online banking. (Had to being the nearest branch of any bank was an hour long flight away, though there was an ice road you could use in the winter.) One of my first questions of the bank was: who issued their certificate. They didn't have a clue what I was talking about. I suppose I could have pushed the question until I found someone who did know, but I also realized that a random person asking about security would be flagged as suspicious. The whole process was based upon blind trust. Not just trust in the browser vendors to limit themselves to reputable CA, but of the CAs themselves and their procedures/policies, and who knows what else.

    • JumpCrisscross 4 days ago |
      > One of my first questions of the bank was: who issued their certificate

      …what did the certificate say?

      > whole process was based upon blind trust

      If I offer someone a ride and they start quizzing me on what differential I’m driving, I’m going to ignore them. That isn’t requiring blind trust, it’s just the wrong place and way to get the information you’re asking for.

      • salawat 3 days ago |
        The problem with that analogy is that the cert issuer isn't a mere component of the car, but the entire car in this instance. That cert being trustworthy is the entire point.

        When I was in schooling getting filled in on Web of Trust, I about ground that particular day's class to a halt because I couldn't imagine the world was that cavalier on such a thing.

        Lo and behold, I realized shortly afterward it absolutely was the case, and there was nada I could do to change it except figure out how to get normal people universally fluent and invested in basic cryptography so they could manage their own trust networks. You can imagine how well that's gone.

        • JumpCrisscross 3 days ago |
          > problem with that analogy is that the cert issuer isn't a mere component of the car, but the entire car in this instance

          I'm critising OP for castiglating a bank employee for not knowing who their CA is. That's not something a line employee needs to know. And that's not the appropriate way to ask that.

          If I want to know who issued HN's certificate, I don't e-mail a YC associate. I look at my browser and see it's Let's Encrypt.

    • throwaway2037 4 days ago |
      First, you don't tell us the location. Are we talking about a CA in Syria or Canada? It makes a big difference. <sacasm>Second, yeah, I'm sure banking regulators say nothing to commercial banks about using a reputable CA.</sacasm>
    • echoangle 3 days ago |
      How does knowing the issuer of the certificate tell you anything if any CA can make certificates for your bank domain? If the answer was „sure, we use GlobalSign“, is that good or bad? If the Brazilian CA is malicious, they can still MITM you, right?

      (Assuming certificate pinning doesn’t exist, which was the case 10 years ago and is true now, too)

      • II2II 3 days ago |
        If my bank uses "GlobalSign" and my browser says "Brazilian CA", I know something is wrong. Granted, such a discrepancy would have been more noticeable back then since the lock icon had the issuer displayed next to it. Now I have to click the lock, then select a menu item to get that information. And, if I'm feeling particularly paranoid, it takes 5 clicks to review the certificate. (At least in Firefox.)

        If the bank is unable to tell me which CA they use through a trusted channel, the only way I could tell if there is a problem is if the CA changes.

  • mattfields 4 days ago |
    Speculative guess, but it sounds like intentional collusion/coercion between government and big corporations.

    ie: Brazilian government demands Microsoft to grant them MITM access from Windows machines, in order for the right to do business in the country.

    • bawolff 3 days ago |
      That seems very unlikely to me.

      Governments are usually sneaky with their evil plans. It is simply too hard to get away with something like that to make it a viable. Case in point, the fact you are reading about it on hn.

  • ikekkdcjkfke 3 days ago |
    How do i remove this CA from windows and Edge?
  • b800h 3 days ago |
    Can anyone tell me which CA is used by Open Banking in Brazil? The infrastructure is heavily based on PKI. I assume it's not this one?
    • meiraleal 3 days ago |
      Yes, ICP-Brasil is responsible for that too.
  • notorandit 3 days ago |
    It's not Microsoft being careless about CAs. That's been made on purpose by them to comply with some request in order to keep a slice of their market.
  • ThePowerOfFuet 3 days ago |
    @dang Can we update the link to the original source?

    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1934361

  • motbus3 3 days ago |
    You care about google? Look at those links, they are loaded with critical government stuff. Omg
  • MattPalmer1086 3 days ago |
    Things like this make me wonder why certificates are not also signed by the certificate owner.

    Right now, a CA can issue a certificate for any public key and domain they like. A rogue trusted CA can intercept all traffic.

    If a certificate also included a signature by the owner of the public key signed by the CA (using their private key, signed over the CA signature), then a CA would no longer have this ability.

    What am I missing?

    • 3np 3 days ago |
      > What am I missing?

      Infrastructure and processes for key distribution and revocation. Reusing the existing PKI infrastructure used for CA trust roots won't handle it. Perhaps public keys/certs could be distributed over DNS, like for DANE (or maybe even using DANE)?

      Not saying it can't be done, just to point out how it's not trivial and requires buy-in from incumbents across the ecosystem.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS-based_Authentication_of_Na...

      I like your general idea of improving the status quo by adding decentralized/self-managed trust on top of/alongside the existing centralized PKI. Could be a stepping stone towards something more systematically resilient.

      • MattPalmer1086 3 days ago |
        Oh sure, any change to X.509 certs would require a lot of change.

        I'm not sure it would make much difference to most of the existing PKI infrastructure though. CAs wouldn't see any difference. For example, currently this is what happens:

        1. Owner: generate CSR and send to CA 2. CA: validates owner identity, signs cert and returns cert to owner.

        All we would then add is:

        3. Owner: signs cert with own private key and uses it.

        As far as I can see, the only other changes required would be to clients (so they could reject non owner signed certs), and maybe some revocation stuff.

        • bawolff 3 days ago |
          This doesn't make sense to me. What would you be trying to prove/show with step 3? How would it be different from the status quo?
          • MattPalmer1086 2 days ago |
            It doesn't help at all, just a poorly thought out idea.
    • rhplus 3 days ago |
      > What am I missing?

      The chain of trust for all the certificates in your example is established by trusting the rogue CA root certificate. The CA (or a bad actor who misled the CA through real-world fraud) could be the “owner” of the key pair you’re trusting for the second signature.

      • MattPalmer1086 3 days ago |
        Good point.
    • bawolff 3 days ago |
      The entire point of a CA is to verify public keys. If the certificate owner already has a verified public key (to sign the certificate with), there would be no need for a CA.
  • 0xbadcafebee 3 days ago |
    Lol. "This is pretty bad. Someone circunvented the ban on emitting public certificates but also disrespected Google's CAA rules. Hope this CA gets banned on Microsoft OSes for good."

    Yeah, this is after the certificate was issued, and my guess, used.

    Also, has anyone tried to look up CT logs lately? I tried. Can get maybe a single FQDN if you look, but trying to do wildcards or name-alikes, nothing worked. Most of the CT searching websites were straight up broken. Clearly nobody is actually looking at CT logs.

    CAs are a joke. There's a dozen different ways to exploit them, they are exploited, and we only find out after the fact, if it's a famous enough domain.

    We could fix it but nobody gives a shit. Just apathy and BAU.

    • AceJohnny2 3 days ago |
      > We could fix it but nobody gives a shit. Just apathy and BAU.

      We really can't fix it. You try and coordinate updates across all major (and most minor, and outdated) OSs, and websites around the world, amateur & professional, from the mom-and-pop store who don't understand any of this, to the big bank that'll take 3 years of procedure.

      I have friends who work in the CA field (on the OS side). The level of alcoholism and turnover in the field is... higher than average.

      • doubled112 3 days ago |
        Relative to all professions or relative to just IT/tech?
    • numbsafari 3 days ago |
      Wildcards work on crt.sh:

      https://crt.sh/?q=%25.ycombinator.com

      • numbsafari 2 days ago |
        Just wanting to add to my own comment...

        crt.sh allows you to subscribe to an RSS feed for wildcard searches. We map those into a slack channel for infrastructure advisory alerts. You can also setup more aggressive alerts if something shows up unexpectedly.

        It's an incredibly handy service.

    • syncsynchalt 3 days ago |
      crt.sh gives you direct access to their postgres database, if you find the capabilities of their site lacking.
    • thayne 3 days ago |
      How would you fix it?
    • aaomidi 3 days ago |
      Give me a grant of a few million a year and we could do significant improvements here :P
  • alwayslikethis 3 days ago |
    I wonder why Brazil has their CA trusted by Microsoft in the first place, while Kazakhstan [1], for example, wasn't.

    1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakhstan_man-in-the-middle_a...

    • kurthr 2 days ago |
      The Brazilian government buys windows licenses in bulk.