Eroding Trust and the CA Debacle

The cracks are becoming increasingly apparent in the certificate infrastructure supporting SSL/TLS, which is used for establishing "secure" HTTPS (HTTP over SSL) connections to Web sites. The sophistication and difficulty of attacking the TLS protocol directly has shifted attention to this infrastructure, including its reliance on human factors, and many attacks have been hypothesized and/or executed in the wild. As the number of browser-trusted (and thus de facto, user-trusted) certificate authorities has proliferated, the due diligence in baseline certificate issuance has declined. In response, numerous mechanisms and protocol extensions have been proposed, with many under active development. This session explores these related research trends and the competing visions they present, as we attempt to determine a path forward. The planned format is presentation plus group discussion.