Trustico

Last updated
Trustico
Type Private company
Industry Internet security, Public key infrastructure
Headquarters,

Trustico is a dedicated SSL certificate provider, They are headquartered in the United Kingdom.

Contents

History

The company was founded in 2006 in United Kingdom by Zane Lucas. They gradually spread around the world over the following years. The firm currently operates entirely in the selling of SSL Certificates.[ citation needed ]

On 22 June 2017 Trustico entered a Partnership with Comodo, a developer of cyber security solutions[ buzzword ] and digital certificates. [2] [3]

The company became notable in March 2018, after its CEO transferred the private keys for 23,000 HTTPS certificates via email (a non-secure protocol) to an executive at DigiCert. [4] [5] [6] [1] The fact that these private keys had been stored by Trustico suggested that Trustico had been violating the baseline requirements for certificate authorities. [4]

This was followed by the disclosure of a critical security flaw – a publicly accessible root shell – in the Trustico website, after which the website was taken offline. [7] [8] The result was that thousands of Trustico customers had their security certificates revoked by DigiCert. [1]

Products

Controversies

Symantec abandonment, 2018

Following Google's statement, on 11 September 2017, to distrust Symantec's SSL Certificates for unsatisfactory security standards. [9] Trustico followed suit in abandoning Symantec issued SSL Certificates. [10] [11] Trustico offered replacements to all Symantec CA Certificates issued between June 2016 and December 2017 in compensation for those affected by the abandonment. [6]

DigiCert and Trustico spat, 2018

On 2 February Trustico sent an email to DigiCert requesting the revocation of all Symantec Certificates - around 50,000 - managed by DigiCert. DigiCert, who had recently acquired Symantec's [12] [13] [14] CA business denies the request to mass-revoke the certificates. On 25 February DigiCert terminated its contract with Trustico after Trustico said it would seek a legal opinion on the matter. [15]

On 27 February DigiCert released a statement claiming they had received an email from Trustico containing over 23,000 private keys before mass emailing Trustico's customers about the security breach. [4] [15]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Public key infrastructure</span> System that can issue, distribute and verify digital certificates

A public key infrastructure (PKI) is a set of roles, policies, hardware, software and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store and revoke digital certificates and manage public-key encryption. The purpose of a PKI is to facilitate the secure electronic transfer of information for a range of network activities such as e-commerce, internet banking and confidential email. It is required for activities where simple passwords are an inadequate authentication method and more rigorous proof is required to confirm the identity of the parties involved in the communication and to validate the information being transferred.

In cryptography, a public key certificate, also known as a digital certificate or identity certificate, is an electronic document used to prove the validity of a public key. The certificate includes the public key and information about it, information about the identity of its owner, and the digital signature of an entity that has verified the certificate's contents. If the device examining the certificate trusts the issuer and finds the signature to be a valid signature of that issuer, then it can use the included public key to communicate securely with the certificate's subject. In email encryption, code signing, and e-signature systems, a certificate's subject is typically a person or organization. However, in Transport Layer Security (TLS) a certificate's subject is typically a computer or other device, though TLS certificates may identify organizations or individuals in addition to their core role in identifying devices. TLS, sometimes called by its older name Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), is notable for being a part of HTTPS, a protocol for securely browsing the web.

In cryptography, X.509 is an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) standard defining the format of public key certificates. X.509 certificates are used in many Internet protocols, including TLS/SSL, which is the basis for HTTPS, the secure protocol for browsing the web. They are also used in offline applications, like electronic signatures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Root certificate</span> Certificate identifying a root authority

In cryptography and computer security, a root certificate is a public key certificate that identifies a root certificate authority (CA). Root certificates are self-signed and form the basis of an X.509-based public key infrastructure (PKI). Either it has matched Authority Key Identifier with Subject Key Identifier, in some cases there is no Authority Key identifier, then Issuer string should match with Subject string. For instance, the PKIs supporting HTTPS for secure web browsing and electronic signature schemes depend on a set of root certificates.

In cryptography, a certificate authority or certification authority (CA) is an entity that stores, signs, and issues digital certificates. A digital certificate certifies the ownership of a public key by the named subject of the certificate. This allows others to rely upon signatures or on assertions made about the private key that corresponds to the certified public key. A CA acts as a trusted third party—trusted both by the subject (owner) of the certificate and by the party relying upon the certificate. The format of these certificates is specified by the X.509 or EMV standard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Verisign</span> American Internet company

Verisign Inc. is an American company based in Reston, Virginia, United States, that operates a diverse array of network infrastructure, including two of the Internet's thirteen root nameservers, the authoritative registry for the .com, .net, and .name generic top-level domains and the .cc country-code top-level domains, and the back-end systems for the .jobs and .edu sponsored top-level domains.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gen Digital</span> Multinational software company

Gen Digital Inc. is a multinational software company co-headquartered in Tempe, Arizona and Prague, Czech Republic. The company provides cybersecurity software and services. Gen is a Fortune 500 company and a member of the S&P 500 stock-market index. The company also has development centers in Pune, Chennai and Bangalore. Its portfolio includes Norton, Avast, LifeLock, Avira, AVG, ReputationDefender, and CCleaner.

The Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) is an Internet protocol used for obtaining the revocation status of an X.509 digital certificate. It is described in RFC 6960 and is on the Internet standards track. It was created as an alternative to certificate revocation lists (CRL), specifically addressing certain problems associated with using CRLs in a public key infrastructure (PKI). Messages communicated via OCSP are encoded in ASN.1 and are usually communicated over HTTP. The "request/response" nature of these messages leads to OCSP servers being termed OCSP responders.

CyberTrust was a security services company formed in Virginia in November 2004 from the merger of TruSecure and Betrusted. Betrusted previously acquired GTE Cybertrust. Cybertrust acquired a large stake in Ubizen, a European security services firm based in Belgium, to become one of the largest information security firms in the world. It was acquired by Verizon Business in 2007. In 2015, the CyberTrust root certificates were acquired by DigiCert, Inc., a leading global Certificate Authority (CA) and provider of trusted identity and authentication services.

Thawte Consulting is a certificate authority (CA) for X.509 certificates. Thawte was founded in 1995 by Mark Shuttleworth in South Africa. As of December 30, 2016, its then-parent company, Symantec Group, was collectively the third largest public CA on the Internet with 17.2% market share.

Xcitium, formerly known as Comodo Security Solutions, Inc., is a cybersecurity company headquartered in Bloomfield, New Jersey.

GeoTrust is a digital certificate provider. The GeoTrust brand was bought by Symantec from Verisign in 2010, but agreed to sell the certificate business in August 2017 to private equity and growth capital firm Thoma Bravo LLC. GeoTrust was the first certificate authority to use the domain-validated certificate method which accounts for 70 percent of all SSL certificates on the Internet. By 2006, GeoTrust was the 2nd largest certificate authority in the world with 26.7 percent market share according to independent survey company Netcraft.

GlobalSign is a certificate authority and a provider of internet identity and security products. As of January 2015, Globalsign was the 4th largest certificate authority in the world, according to Netcraft.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DigiCert</span> Internet security company

DigiCert, Inc. is a digital security company headquartered in Lehi, Utah. As a certificate authority (CA) and trusted third party, DigiCert provides public key infrastructure (PKI) and validation required for issuing digital certificates or TLS/SSL certificates.

The Certification Authority Browser Forum, also known as the CA/Browser Forum, is a voluntary consortium of certification authorities, vendors of Internet browser and secure email software, operating systems, and other PKI-enabled applications that promulgates industry guidelines governing the issuance and management of X.509 v.3 digital certificates that chain to a trust anchor embedded in such applications. Its guidelines cover certificates used for the SSL/TLS protocol and code signing, as well as system and network security of certificate authorities.

StartCom was a certificate authority founded in Eilat, Israel, and later based in Beijing, China, that had three main activities: StartCom Enterprise Linux, StartSSL and MediaHost. StartCom set up branch offices in China, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and Spain. Due to multiple faults on the company's end, all StartCom certificates were removed from Mozilla Firefox in October 2016 and Google Chrome in March 2017, including certificates previously issued, with similar removals from other browsers expected to follow.

DigiNotar was a Dutch certificate authority owned by VASCO Data Security International, Inc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Certificate Authority Security Council</span>

The Certificate Authority Security Council (CASC) is a multi-vendor industry advocacy group created to conduct research, promote Internet security standards and educate the public on Internet security issues.

Certificate Transparency (CT) is an Internet security standard for monitoring and auditing the issuance of digital certificates.

DNS Certification Authority Authorization (CAA) is an Internet security policy mechanism that allows domain name holders to indicate to certificate authorities whether they are authorized to issue digital certificates for a particular domain name. It does this by means of a "CAA" Domain Name System (DNS) resource record.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "23,000 HTTPS certs will be axed in next 24 hours after private keys leak". The Register. Retrieved 11 September 2018.
  2. "Comodo and Trustico Team Up in Strategic Worldwide Partnership". www.prnewswire.com (Press release). Retrieved 2018-09-24.
  3. "Strategic global partnership announced between Comodo and Trustico - News @ WebHosting.info". News @ WebHosting.info. 2017-06-23. Retrieved 2018-09-24.
  4. 1 2 3 "23,000 HTTPS certificates axed after CEO emails private keys". 2018.
  5. Whittaker, Zack. "Trustico compromises own customers' HTTPS private keys in spat with partner". ZDNet .
  6. 1 2 "23,000 Digital Certificates Revoked in DigiCert-Trustico Spat - SecurityWeek.Com". www.securityweek.com. March 2018.
  7. "Trustico website goes dark after someone drops critical flaw on Twitter". 2018.
  8. "HTTPS cert flingers Trustico, SSL Direct go TITSUP after website security blunder blabbed". The Register .
  9. "Chrome's Plan to Distrust Symantec Certificates". Google Online Security Blog. Retrieved 2018-09-24.
  10. "Trustico abandons Symantec SSL certificates -". Enterprise Times. 2018-02-19. Retrieved 2018-09-24.
  11. "Trustico Abandons Symantec SSL Certificates" . Retrieved 2018-09-24.
  12. "Distrust of the Symantec PKI: Immediate action needed by site operators". Google Online Security Blog. Retrieved 2018-09-24.
  13. "Symantec to sell SSL certificate and PKI business to DigiCert". Comodo News and Internet Security Information. 2017-08-03. Retrieved 2018-09-24.
  14. "Symantec Sells SSL Business to DigiCert for $950M in Cash and 30% Shares". BleepingComputer. Retrieved 2018-09-24.
  15. 1 2 "23,000 Users Lose SSL Certificates in Trustico-DigiCert Spat". BleepingComputer. Retrieved 2018-09-24.