Root Causes: A PKI and Security Podcast

Certificate pinning is the practice of coding software to demand the presence of a specific certificate brand or root in order to function correctly. Though once considered a legitimate security option, certificate pinning is widely discredited because it carries unacceptable certificate agility costs. Join our hosts as they explain what certificate pinning is, how it came about, and why nearly al...

For more than a year Sectigo has been providing the market with information to understand what we all must do to change our cryptography to prepare for quantum computers. Now Sectigo has announced Sectigo Quantum Labs, a destination for education on quantum-safe certificates (QSC) and our Quantum-Safe Kit, which allows enterprises to create their own hybrid quantum-safe certs. Join us as we articu...

Distributed data centers are extremely common in today's computing environments. Unencrypted replication of data across these centers leaves data open to theft. Nonetheless, existing systems and software leave that possibility open, and sometimes data replication occurs in the clear. Our hosts explain how this situation can come about and what to do about it.

When you obtain an SSL certificate, you can choose between single-domain, multi-domain, and wildcard certificates. Join our hosts as they explain the different domain spaces available with TLS certificates and the pros and cons of each approach.

SMS-based one time password (OTP) is a very commonly used form of multi-factor authentication (MFA). That's because it's fast and inexpensive to roll out to users. Unfortunately it is deeply vulnerable to a set of well-defined attacks. In this episode our hosts explain why SMS MFA became so popular and how this outdated MFA scheme fails to provide the security expected by those who use it.

Root expirations occasionally make headlines by breaking systems, but it's a fact that certificates are expiring every day, each a potential outage waiting to happen. So why do certificates expire in the first place? Join our hosts as they discuss the reasons for expiration, its advantages over other mechanisms like revocation, and the right amount of time for a certificate to last.

ETSI has published its new Baseline Requirements for consumer IoT device security, which includes a number of provisions directly related to encryption, strong identity, and device software integrity. Join our hosts as they describe the PKI-related portions of the new ETSI requirements and why they are valuable for security.

A recently identified and widespread configuration error has created a situation where, with the wrong attack on certain public roots, certificates could become essentially unrevokable. As a consequence, 14 public CAs will have to revoke their OCSP certificates, many of which are also intermediates, and permanently discontinue use of their keys. That leaves millions of active TLS, S/MIME, code sig...

Many people know that TOR is a browser used for anonymous online activity, but most of us don't know much more than that. In this episode our hosts explain how the TOR network operates, what its potential value is, and how TOR compares to a VPN.

Our hosts often discuss the idea of errors in PKI implementations and the potential negative consequences for organizations. In this episode they categorize twenty-one PKI pitfalls to avoid according to five main categories of error: certificate problems, deployment problems, systemic security problems, governance problems, and visibility problems. Join us for a crisp description of these twenty-o...

The need to suddenly enable nearly 100% of information workers for secure, productive work-from-home was a curve ball for IT departments to deal with around the world. Sectigo recently released the results of a commissioned survey of 500 IT professionals about the impact of widespread WFH requirements on IT departments, roadmaps, security, and employee productivity. In this episode our hosts go ov...

A newly proposed US Senate bill called the Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act would require service providers and device manufacturers to provide access to encrypted data based on a valid warrant. In this episode our hosts explain the bill's contents and some of the opportunities and pitfalls it presents.

Google has just announced the coming availability of end-to-end encryption for its chat service. In this episode our hosts describe the spectrum of potential protection within the capabilities we call end-to-end encryption, including forward secrecy and durability of keys.

Once widely used, SHA-1 is considered insecure today and has been deprecated from the most common PKI use cases. OpenSSH recently provided a roadmap to its eventual deprecation of SHA-1. Join our hosts as they discuss the long, complex process of sunsetting a widely used cryptographic practice, the factors that contribute to these practices continuing beyond their secure lifespans, and the importa...

The recent expiration of Sectigo's AddTrust legacy root caused some systems to stop working and forced some admins to keep working over the weekend until all was fixed. In this episode we explain roots, root expirations, why they are a non event for most users, and why sometimes an expiration can be more impactful.

A new kind of identity certificate is coming that will enable businesses to include their logos in official email they send in order to improve customer confidence and protect against phishing. It is called a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) and is built upon the DMARC standard, which controls which senders are allowed to send email using any given From address. In this episode our hosts explain VM...

Mozilla has announced its intention to remove support for FTP from the Firefox browser, citing concerns about security and the degree of effort required to keep this functionality current. Join our hosts as they discuss this announcement and its potential effects as well as the considerations that go into choosing when to drop support for outdated, unpopular, or sub-optimal capabilities in technol...

Congress's proposed EARN IT act has many industry observers worried about its potential effect on the integrity of encrypted communication. In recent news, secure communication app Signal has floated the idea of relocating outside the United States if that's what's required to retain its ability to offer end-to-end encryption without spying eyes interfering. In this week's episode, we discuss this...

For PKI to be secure, private keys need to remain private. In this episode we explain "vaulting" for keys or other shared secrets. We touch on the vulnerabilities that secrets vaulting fights against and the common use cases for vaulting.

One essential portion of the certificate lifecycle is the ability to revoke certificates. Public SSL certificates use a pair of mechanisms to communicate this revocation status to client machines, CRL and OCSP. In this episode we explain how these mechanisms work and some of their strengths and challenges.

With the global workforce's massive shift to work-from-home, a clever new set of opportunistic social engineering attacks has sprung up to take advantage of our unfamiliarity with our new communication and collaboration applications and processes. In this episode our hosts describe these new attacks and what IT departments can do to combat them.

As we plan our societal return to normalcy, a number of people and groups are discussing the concept of an electronic "immunity passport" that individuals can possess if they are known to be immune to COVID-19 (possibly through vaccination or prior infection). Today our hosts discuss the requirements for such an immunity passport, some of the opportunities and challenges in putting this...

Australia's Rabobank recently experienced an outage preventing its Android banking app from connecting to its servers. The root cause? An expired certificate. In this episode our hosts explain what happened and how it could have been avoided. They also discuss certificate pinning, how it came to be used with apps like this one, and its disadvantages.

Distributed PKI is a new approach, with advocates saying it will eliminate many weaknesses they perceive with traditional, hierarchical PKI architecture. Guest Alan Grau joins our hosts at they explain how distributed PKI works, describe its proclaimed benefits, and take a hard look at whether or not these claims hold up.

"Zero Trust" is an IT security philosophy that maximizes protection from threats by tightly controlling access and permissions for every individual, device, and process in the organization's environment. Learn how digital identity and certificates play a key role in operating a secure Zero Trust strategy.