Chinese root CA issues rogue/fake certificates

Wed Aug 31 05:11:52 UTC 2016

On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 8:38 PM, Eric Kuhnke <eric.kuhnke at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> http://www.percya.com/2016/08/chinese-ca-wosign-faces-revocation.html
>
> One of the largest Chinese root certificate authority WoSign issued many
> fake certificates due to an vulnerability.  WoSign's free certificate
> service allowed its users to get a certificate for the base domain if they
> were able to prove control of a subdomain. This means that if you can
> control a subdomain of a major website, say percy.github.io, you're able to
> obtain a certificate by WoSign for github.io, taking control over the
> entire domain.

And there is now strong circumstantial evidence that WoSign now owns -
or at least, directly controls - StartCom:

https://www.letsphish.org/?part=about

There are mixed signals of incompetence and deliberate action here.

Royce