Re:There is no WhatsApp 'backdoor'
by oarsinsync on Saturday January 14, 2017 @03:08AM
(#13397471)
> Not paying Verisign your rent?
Would have been a fair statement a couple of years ago, but we live in a day when you can get free annual certs manually (Startssl) and free 90 day certs automatically (Letsencrypt).
Re:There is no WhatsApp 'backdoor'
by cookiecaper on Saturday January 14, 2017 @04:49PM
(#13400761)
The StartSSL CA is in the process of being blacklisted by major browser vendors because they issued a certificate for github.com to someone who clearly does not run github.com. [0]
LetsEncrypt just barely left beta (also this summer) and I'll admit that I haven't investigated it thoroughly, but it appears that some widespread devices are still incompatible (also consider the versions that accept LetsEncrypt; some of those are fairly recent, like CM 10). [1]
While some noble souls like LetsEncrypt have sought to remedy this rent-seeking behavior, it remains the fact that in most cases, a traditional CA is going to be required for a couple more years at least.
[0]https://www.schrauger.com/the-story-of-how-wosign-gave-me-an...
Not paying Verisign your rent? That's an "error condition".
(Here of course referring to the choice of browser vendors to block access to web sites that offer secure end-to-end crypto via TLS, but merely haven't paid a browser-trusted CA to issue a new cert with a future expiration date.)