

StartCom charges for reissuing SSL certs due to Heartbleed - DiabloD3
https://cv.exbit.io/emails/startssl_heartbeat.txt

======
rdl
I wish someone could do a genuinely free SSL CA with "reasonable" procedures,
just to disrupt the industry. Charging $19 to 500/yr for something which is
fundamentally non-rival (unlike, say, a domain name) with very minimal
marginal cost is basically bullshit rent-seeking.

SSL certs are an utter commodity, and generally the CA system is a broken
system, but we'd be a lot better off with free "real" SSL certs everywhere
rather than a bunch of self signed stuff. The loss here is the large number of
applications with self-signed certs on the Internet, as well as the general
hassle involved in purchasing and renewing certs for everyone who does.

The cost of having a well-run base CA is small number of millions to set up
and maybe $1-2mm/yr. It would do a lot more good than many other charities.
The marginal costs to do mail-from auth S/MIME and domain-verify certs would
be limited.

I used to think StartCom was a good solution for this, but after recent staff
departures, and their shortsighted-at-best policy here, I can't recommend
them.

With commercial CAs, people use wildcard certs in a lot of places where they
should be using distinct other certs. It's maybe not an issue for https for
main company websites ($49/yr isn't too big a deal), but I want people to use
real certs for START TLS email, client certs, etc. I also want one CA to be
really popular, or at least one simple cert-issuance protocol to be popular,
so "automatically generate a cert and CSR and get the cert loaded" becomes an
automatic part of software setup.

I'm kind of surprised Google hasn't done this, in exchange for people proving
ownership of a Google+ account or something. FB, Twitter, etc. could all
easily bury the costs of a genuinely free CA.

~~~
nodata
Why does it have to be free? 5 bucks a year for an SSL cert is peanuts.

If you want free, push for killing CAs :)

~~~
dingaling
> 5 bucks a year for an SSL cert is peanuts.

'per year' pricing is one of the most insidious aspects of the current CA
system.

Certificates don't rot.

They claim that annual renewal is necessay to protect us from a rogue but
unrevoked certificate; however any malicious activities would be quite
profitable well within a year.

So why not set renewal to be monthly, just to be extra-safe? Weekly? Perhaps I
should suggest that to them. The resulting outcry from users might be the only
way we can disrupt the CA situation.

~~~
nodata
I think the billing interval is relatively unimportant.

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ggreer
I use StartCom, and I revoked and re-keyed yesterday. In the revocation
reason, I linked to the CVE. They waived the fee, citing "exceptional
circumstances." It could be that they're waiving fees only for paying users.
My certs with them are all class 2 wildcards; definitely _not_ free. Or it
could just be inconsistency during a very hectic time for them.

I've used several CAs and StartCom is the one I dislike the least. I wish
Amazon would become a registrar and CA. Then AWS would really be one-stop
shopping.

~~~
sho_hn
I have free Class 1 certs, and had to pay for all revocations. They did ask me
first and pointed out that upgrading to Class 2 would be cheaper, and
suggested that reissueing at Class 2 would be sufficient. However, they
admitted it would create more latency. I bit the bullet and went ahead with
the revocations.

My wallet is unhappy, and I do feel like charging for revocations is a bit
odd, since revocations usually happen for security reasons and this
deincentivizes good security. OTOH, they do run a business and I've created
work for them at no charge previously, so I'm not mad.

~~~
dtech
It's not unreasonable to charge a little bit for a revocation. They require
more work than a cert itself (updating and hosting the revokes list etc.) and
a fee prevents unneccesary revokations from taking place.

~~~
sho_hn
Yeah, I'm not really mad. Every time I have interacted with StartCom personnel
they've been fast, courteous and competent, and their style is enjoyably
direct and goal-focused (plain email, no boiler plate, no patronizing). I like
the idea of competent people getting paid well, so that soothes my hurting
wallet a bit.

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pritambaral
The title is misleading. StartCom is asking for its fee for revoking, that's
all. Not making revocation free of cost isn't refusal to reissue cert.

~~~
dtech
With startcom you cannot request a cert for the same (sub)domain until the
current certificate expires in 2 weeks or less

~~~
pritambaral
But you CAN revoke the current one.

~~~
pra
for which you pay dearly.

~~~
pritambaral
Yes, 25 USD. I wasn't arguing that, though. My point was: the original title
to the tune of "StartCom is refusing to reissue certs" was misleading.

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tlrobinson
I can understand if they want to charge for revocations, fine, but their
attitude here is horrible. The customer wasn't demanding free revocation, he
was politely asking if they would offer free revocations. StartCom jumped
straight to quoting "Subscriber Obligations". Wow.

~~~
chris_wot
I'm curious though. What part of the obligations quoted was the subscriber
violating?

~~~
nenolod
None.

------
nuxi7
Who wants to file the bug for removal from Mozilla?

[http://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/about/governance/policies/secur...](http://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/about/governance/policies/security-group/certs/policy/maintenance/)

Section 2, dot 2.

CAs must revoke Certificates that they have issued upon the occurrence of any
of the following events:

the CA obtains reasonable evidence that the subscriber’s private key
(corresponding to the public key in the certificate) has been compromised or
is suspected of compromise (e.g. Debian weak keys), or that the certificate
has otherwise been misused;

~~~
nuxi7
Done,

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=994478](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=994478)

------
chris_wot
"We do understand the situation very well, thanks."

Really? Then why does he quote the following policy:

    
    
        Never share private keys with any third party and use adequate
        protection and best security practices to secure private keys in
        order prevent losses and compromises thereof.
    

If he grasps the situation, what part of that policy would apply?!?

------
leafonthewind
Every CA that motivates cert owners to rather not revoke certs if they get
compromised, should not be a trusted CA by anybody. It's that simple.

StartCom's been doing this for a long time. This is what makes them dangerous.
It does not make them any more dangerous now than before.

Even if StartCom made an exception in this case, it should not change
anything. Because even without hearbleed, certs still get compromised and
StartCom's standard practice is to motivate owners to keep using known
compromised certs.

Why does anybody trust a CA with this policy? Why is StartCom included in
browsers and OSes? Why isn't anybody removing StartCom and CAs with similar
policies from trusted CAs?

------
grk
Also, you can't issue a new cert for a domain until the old one is revoked.

~~~
callesgg
Yes you can (technically at-least)

~~~
StefanWallin
well, not with their webui.

------
mirabilos
I got an eMail from a certmaster denying me a free rekey, for a soon-to-be
tax-exempt non-profit society of public utility (so there is no money here,
and we do not even process credit card data or anything). And that after
someone else _did_ get a free rekey citing this vulnerability. Clearly,
Startcom is either swimming in money today and losing their status as trusted
Root CA very soon, or they got to change their attitude RSN, pronto.

~~~
SimonIremonger
For what its' worth, they have finally released a statement:-

[https://www.startssl.com/?app=43](https://www.startssl.com/?app=43)

This claims that CRLs and OCSP would then be expensive / lots of downloads....

------
grk
cached:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_g-9Lnd...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_g-9LndhkJAJ:https://cv.exbit.io/emails/startssl_heartbeat.txt+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=pl)

