{"id":24695,"date":"2011-09-19T08:57:30","date_gmt":"2011-09-19T13:57:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pcmatic.com\/blog\/?p=24695"},"modified":"2011-09-19T08:57:30","modified_gmt":"2011-09-19T13:57:30","slug":"windows-secrets-newsletter-the-not-so-secure-ssl-certificates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pcmatic.com\/blog\/windows-secrets-newsletter-the-not-so-secure-ssl-certificates\/","title":{"rendered":"Windows Secrets Newsletter: The not-so-secure SSL certificates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.pcmatic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/20110126windowssecrets.jpg\" alt=\"windows secrets\" class=\"attachment wp-att-7167 alignleft\" \/><\/p>\n<p>By Woody Leonhard\/Windows Secrets Newsletter<\/p>\n<p> <strong>Two brazen Web-server break-ins this year call into question one of the Internet&#8217;s fundamental security mechanisms &#8212; website security certificates.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Because the most recent breach affected only PC users in Iran, most of us assume we&#8217;re immune. But we&#8217;re not; here&#8217;s why &#8212; and what we can do to protect ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>In her Sept. 8 <a href=\"http:\/\/WindowsSecrets.com\/links\/$P20d\/11830fh\/?url=windowssecrets.com%2Ftop-story%2Fcertificate-cleanup-for-most-personal-computers%2F\" target=\"_blank\">Top Story<\/a>, Susan Bradley talked about compromised SSL security certificates from DigiNotar, a certificate authority (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Certificate_authority\" target=\"_blank\">definition<\/a>). Somebody had broken into DigiNotar&#8217;s certificate-issuing computers &#8212; all of them &#8212; and made a bunch of fake certificates for such sites as *.google.com, *.microsoft.com, and windowsupdate.com. In her article, Susan gave instructions for manually removing potentially compromised certificates from your system. Microsoft, thankfully, has recently automated this process through MS Support article <a href=\"http:\/\/support.microsoft.com\/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;2607712\" target=\"_blank\">2607712<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The mainstream press has gone gaga over the story and has produced a blizzard of ill-informed and misleading reports. If you can join the words <strong><em>hacker, Iran,<\/em><\/strong> and <strong><em>browser<\/em><\/strong> with a few technical-sounding nonsense words and then speculate wildly, you, too, could be writing copy for one of the major news outlets.<\/p>\n<p>Below, I explain exactly how security certificates work, and I describe the perversity of the certificate-issuing process: how we got into this fine mess and what we can do to stay out of it in the future.<\/p>\n<h3> Just what exactly is a security certificate? <\/h3>\n<p>No doubt you&#8217;ve used <strong>https<\/strong> secure sites for years. You know to look for the &#8220;s&#8221; in <strong>https<\/strong> before typing any sensitive information into your PC, and you know that your browser (depending on brand and version) displays a padlock icon or some equivalent symbol when it&#8217;s safe to type passwords, account numbers, e-mail messages, and similar personal information. If you don&#8217;t see a lock, or the lock is crossed out as in Figure 1, anything you type can be viewed by anyone casually snooping on your Internet connection.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/download.windowssecrets.com\/images\/wsn\/W20110915-certnotvalid.jpg\" title=\"Certnotvalid\" alt=\"W20110915 certnotvalid The sorry tale of the (un)Secure Sockets Layer\" align=\"left\" height=\"47\" hspace=\"0\" vspace=\"3\" width=\"362\" \/><br clear=\"all\"\/> <\/p>\n<p><strong> Figure 1. An indication from Chrome that the site you&#8217;re visiting doesn&#8217;t have a valid certificate.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When you type <strong>https<\/strong> into a browser&#8217;s address bar, your browser must validate the site&#8217;s Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate (or <strong><em>cert<\/em><\/strong>). If the browser believes it&#8217;s good, the lock shows up on your browser&#8217;s address bar and you have a secure connection.<\/p>\n<p>Or do you?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/windowssecrets.com\/top-story\/the-sorry-tale-of-the-unsecure-sockets-layer\/?utm_source=PCPitstop&#038;utm_medium=email\" target=\"_blank\">Article Continued Here:<\/a><\/p>\n<p>This post is excerpted with permission from Windows Secrets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/techtalk.pcpitstop.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/20110126windowssecrets.jpg\" alt=\"windowssecrets_screen\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"attachment wp-att-6330 alignleft\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The break-in of a root-cert service reveals weaknesses in Web security.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":66012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[316,226,722,650],"class_list":["post-24695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-windows-secrets","tag-privacy","tag-security","tag-ssl-certificates","tag-windows-secrets-newsletter"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Windows Secrets Newsletter: The not-so-secure SSL certificates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The break-in of a root-cert service reveals weaknesses in Web security.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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