I'm still really bummed about StartCom's suicide/implosion. They had by far the most sane and reasonable pricing model I've ever seen, and one I really wish someone else would do. They basically only charged for non-automatic authentication, not for what you did with that authentication, and then let each level of authentication feed into higher levels. So Level 1 machine auth (similar in spirit to LE) was entirely free, you could verify an email, domain, or whatever and then produce certs for that. If you wished you could pay money (~$60 for 2 years IIRC) to have an actual human look at your documentation and give you a call, then give you a Level 2 with your legal name. You could then use that for an unlimited number of S/MIME certs for email accounts, domains, software signing and so forth. Having gotten personal verification to level 2, you could then pay to have an organization certified. Etc.
Their UI wasn't the best, but it was functional and the overall system made a lot of sense. They didn't put an artificial price on some bits with a marginal cost of nada. It's a real shame all that got flushed, because that model of business filled a hole that has no general world solution right now (in principle authentication of their citizens should be a core role and offering of modern government, but I'm not holding my breath there).
You're forgetting that they had a charge for revocation, which was also automated. Even after Heartbleed, they refused to revoke the potentially compromised certificates without being paid. They also advertised their certificates as 100% free, even though they clearly weren't (because of the revocation charges). The certificates were not free for commercial purposes either.
IMO, just like one of those schemes where you don't pay to get in, but you have to pay to get out.
It's a shame, because they could have achieved a market share similar to Let's Encrypt, if only they had played their cards slightly differently.
>You're forgetting that they had a charge for revocation, which was also automated.
I did not forget that, I was just talking about the authentication and certificate issuance side. But though it didn't fall under the umbrella of authentication it is something that actually cost real money at that point. You misunderstood the situation and how revocation functioned in a way that's extremely important (since it's finally getting fixed but the improvements could use more widespread deployment). The original certificate revocation mechanisms, CRL and OCSP, are and always have been completely broken in terms of fundamental scaling and failure modes. Scott Helme just did an excellent summary on the situation and upcoming developments [1] which I strongly encourage you to read, but in essence due to the way they work seriously offering CRL/OCSP (as in, in a way that won't instantly die when someone breaths on it hard) services and adding certs to them requires significant distributed infrastructure, which has not always been cheap. They were bad approaches even with that though due to other practical failure modes that were beyond a CA's control anyway. Both stink to the point that many (most? all?) operating systems/applications/browsers just soft fail by default or even ignore them entirely. "Revocation" for the wider web has largely been a mirage.
StartCom did in fact have an explainer about this at one point, and their position was reasonable. Other CAs hid the cost in large part by charging a ridiculous amount for every cert issuance, despite many people never actually needing revocation services. StartCom let you have as many certs as you wanted after authentication for free, but if you lost one in such a way that you needed to make use of CRL/OCSP then you were charged. Users could pay that price, or alternatively invest in other ways to mitigate at their discretion rather then just getting charged no matter what.
If StartCom had survived until now, or if someone else adopted their model, then I'd expect at this point they'd make use of modern techniques like OCSP Must-Staple/Expect-Staple, CAA, CT, etc. by default, and in turn that problem would be solved at no cost.
>IMO, just like one of those schemes where you don't pay to get in, but you have to pay to get out.
This is completely ridiculous. Nothing inherently made anyone lose private keys. Even Heartbleed didn't defeat someone using an HSM for example. Nor would everyone who lost a private key need try to publicly revoke (to the extent that would even work). Given the cost tradeoffs this was one particular standards design failure that has been and remains wrong to make into some general insurance vs letting individuals have the freedom to deal with it as needed and/or having the standard itself fixed.
Whether revocation works has nothing to with my point about StartCom, which is that they weren't honest about what was free and what wasn't. I know this because I was annoyed with it at the time and actively looked at how they presented themselves.
On the topic of revocation, you're missing a couple of aspects:
- First, both end users and CAs are required to revoke certificates that are compromised; it's not an option. It's a fundamental part of a CA's operation.
- Second, CAs provide revocation services like OCSP for revoked and non-revoked certificates alike. So, certainly the costs for running OCSP are comparable in both cases. You could argue that CRLs cost a bit more, but largely only because of the bandwidth cost (as CRL is just a file).
>which is that they weren't honest about what was free and what wasn't.
You have repeatedly stated this, and it is objectively false. The StartSSL site did not forbid archiving, and thus is available [1] going back to 2004 on the Wayback Machine. This includes both the HTML FAQ page and the policy PDFs of the time. This isn't some EULA boilerplate, actual clear policies and procedures for a CA you're interested in using for your infrastructure is something that is absolutely your responsibility to read.
When discussing Revocation (clearly titled) in the FAQ and Policy & Practice statements, even very old versions stated that a fee could be charged, and that revocation was considered a separate issue for free usage due to growth of the CRL. Later (since at least mid-2010, which is 2 years before Heartbleed was even introduced and 4 years before public disclosure) made this even more explicit, put it right in the FAQ, and put a clear price on it. From the FAQ, 2010 [2], the first sentence:
>>"72) Revocations carry a handling fee of currently US$ 24.90. [...] Extended Validation certificates are exempt from the revocation handling fee."
Please explain how they "weren't honest about what was free and what wasn't." Did you "actively look at how they presented themselves" but fail to so much as glance at the FAQ or Policies documents in doing so? None of this was remotely hidden, it was literally listed twice on the front page, both in the major navigation on the top and as one of just 10 sidebar items.
>First, both end users and CAs are required to revoke certificates that are compromised
Please back up your arguments on this. WRT to end users, under what authority at all are they "required" to do jack shit? Failing to do so in SOME industries and jurisdictions MIGHT involve negligence, but even that would depend on what other measures are taken. Please link any specific legislative or regulatory authority requirements to the contrary.
As far as CAs themselves, the authority would be the CA/B (enforced by virtue of browser/OS inclusion requirements, so the real ultimate "authority" there would be Apple/Google/Microsoft/Mozilla/OSS major distros & projects). At the time when StartCom established its initial policy, v1 of the CA/B baseline requirements [3] had not even been adopted yet (BR v1 adoption was Nov 2011, effective date was July 2012). Even then, 13.1.1 merely stated that:
>>"13.1.1 REVOCATION REQUEST: The CA SHALL provide a process for Subscribers to request revocation of their own Certificates. The process MUST be described in the CA’s Certificate Policy or Certification Practice Statement. The CA SHALL maintain a continuous 24x7 ability to accept and respond to revocation requests and related inquiries."
There were reporting requirements, and a 13.1.5 covers circumstances under which a CA must revoke within 24 hours. The most recent version, BR 1.4.5 (1.4.6 & 1.4.7 are in review), moves revocation to section 4.9 and includes additional details and sections (including, note, that there is no maximum latency on CRLs stipulated so a dishonest CA could make them "free" but run it off a toaster that takes 20 minutes per request).
However in none of this is it required that the CA make the process available for arbitrary usage at no cost. If a subscriber refuses to pay and the CA discovers a cert falls under one or more SHALL REVOKE parts of "Reasons for Revoking a Subscriber Certificate", then they have to revoke anyway and the cost may be unrecoverable, but they are free to treat it as a debt and go after the purchaser on their own for that money (or ban them from further use of their services). StartCom had a written laid out policy and procedure, and it was available continuously on their site. What requirement did they fail at?
>Second, CAs provide revocation services like OCSP for revoked and non-revoked certificates alike. So, certainly the costs for running OCSP are comparable in both cases. You could argue that CRLs cost a bit more, but largely only because of the bandwidth cost (as CRL is just a file).
Note again (and I pointed at this in my original reply): even now, BR contains no requirements on specific availability or latency beyond the original requirement (13.2.3 v1.0, 4.10.2 v1.4.5) that:
>>"The CA SHALL operate and maintain its CRL and OCSP capability with resources sufficient to provide a response time of ten seconds or less under normal operating conditions."
Ten seconds! Under normal operating conditions (DDOS survivability, ha!). Meeting requirements on the cheap is not the same as doing it right (to the extent that's even possible). And you are far to blasé about the growth of CRL in a situation where an unlimited number of 1 or 2 year length certs can be issued free of charge. One of the most principle rules of service scaling is that if you make something available that has a minor cost available at no cost, there is always a risk that users will fully take advantage of that.
One of the best parts about the new BRs is that they've started the process of allowing CAs to replace base OCSP requirements with use of Stapling (although oddly only for "high traffic" sites, whatever that means). That should be generalized/accelerated and both CRLs and base OCSP done away with entirely ASAP. But even given previous and existing rules I find your assertions that StartCom was dishonest or failed to meet requirements unconvincing right now.
I've already explained in one of my earlier posts in this very thread: In my opinion, it was dishonest to advertise certificates as "100% free" when they charged for revocation.
Just because the revocation charges were documented somewhere on the web site doesn't make it right. A large percentage of certificates is revoked. Revocation is a normal and expected part of certificate lifecycle. Thus they should have been crystal clear upfront saying "we charge for revocation" in the same sentence where they said "we don't charge for issuance". They could have mentioned it on the same page, but they didn't do that either (I just checked their "free" certificate page from a random point in time.) So ask yourself why they didn't put such an important fact where most people would see it.
I had paid them for more than 5 years to provide a cert for my hobbyist website, then one day on a random subdomain decided that it was an 'organisation' and started demanding more money to verify this organisation, when there was no real organisation at all
Gandi's been a long-time supporter of Debian[1], providing preferred pricing (their best "bulk rates") for years. I assume the CA migration was also donated.
I'm personally quite glad the SPI CA is gone, and that we removed CACert[2][3]; stopped a lot of "works on my machine" confusion, and made the project more welcoming to people not already running a Debian derivative.
Their UI wasn't the best, but it was functional and the overall system made a lot of sense. They didn't put an artificial price on some bits with a marginal cost of nada. It's a real shame all that got flushed, because that model of business filled a hole that has no general world solution right now (in principle authentication of their citizens should be a core role and offering of modern government, but I'm not holding my breath there).