On Thu, 2011-03-24 at 13:29 -0500, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 07:58:48 -0700,
> johhny_at_poland77 <johhny_at_poland77@zoho.com> wrote:
> > https://blog.torproject.org/blog/detecting-certificate-authority-compromises-and-web-browser-collusion
> >
> > "Users of Mozilla Firefox that are concerned about this issue should enable security.OCSP.require in the about:config dialog."
> >
> > How can i enable this feature in Google Chrome/Chromium?
>
> about:config is a URL that you can visit. You can then click on the
> the setting to modify it's value. You can also type in a pattern to use
> as a filter so that there are less settings shown.
>
> Depnding on what you are really worried about, you might be better off totally
> disabling the checking the bad certificate list instead of bothering to
> have the black list block access to web pages. Sending all of the certifictes
> you visit to the CA to verify may be a bigger security risk than being
> tricked into visiting a web page with an incorrectly issued certificate.

Wierd advice IMHO. There are a number of practical reasons for not
checking CRLs (Certificate Revocation Lists) all the time, but sending
cert serial numbers to the CA is not among them. The serial number is
not secret information (neither is the cert itself of course). If you
don't trust the CA, then better disable certs entirely, not just CRL
checking.

poc

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On Thu, 2011-03-24 at 14:10 -0500, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 14:16:49 -0430,
> Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Wierd advice IMHO. There are a number of practical reasons for not
> > checking CRLs (Certificate Revocation Lists) all the time, but sending
> > cert serial numbers to the CA is not among them. The serial number is
> > not secret information (neither is the cert itself of course). If you
> > don't trust the CA, then better disable certs entirely, not just CRL
> > checking.
>
> Sending the serial number to the CA allows the CA to guess (with high
> probability of being correct) that you are visiting the web page that
> they sold the certificate for. This information can be resold to other
> companies for marketing purposes (or other reasons). If there is any
> money in this, I wouldn't expect Verisign to pass the opportunity up based
> on other similar stuff they have done.

Even if that's true, it doesn't belie what I just said. If you don't
trust the CA, don't use their services at all.

There does not exist, and never can exist, a means of securing
communication between two parties that don't trust each other unless
they both decide to place some level of trust in a third party. CAs are
just one way to do that (and clearly they need to get their act
together). Web-of-trust mechanisms are another but I don't know of any
mainstream browsers that support them.

poc

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