Root Causes: A PKI and Security Podcast

X9 is a consortium certificate for interbanking applications. There is a common misunderstanding that X9 certificates are a public-trust surrogate for mTLS using WebPKI certificates. We clarify why this is not the case.

"Chaos engineering" describes the practice of injecting faults into a system to see what happens. This is a known strategy for deterministic systems, but with the advent of non-deterministic AI systems, chaos engineering has taken on greater importance.

Since frontier-model AIs have been trained on a large portion of published human knowledge, widespread publication of incorrect information can taint AI results. As more AI-generated slop finds its way onto the internet, this runs the risk of further poisoning AI results. This ultimately can result in completely unusable information.

It is possible to use common tools like OpenSSL to create your own ML-DSA private CA. This is a great tool for development and research projects, but Jason explains the pitfalls with trying to do this for production systems.

We are replacing RSA with the combination of ML-DSA and ML-KEM. We explain the naming convention and specifically what these two algorithms do.

Jason explains de-quantization, which is the practice of using our knowledge of how to use a quantum computer to reframe problems for processing using traditional computing architecture.

There is no CABF or root program rule preventing public CAs from implementing new requirements earlier than their assigned due dates. We discuss reasons to implement a rule early and how early it should be.

It is surprising that we continue to see root expirations occur at the most inopportune times. Weekends, public holidays, even New Year's Eve. In this episode we have simple advice to anybody setting up a new root, which is "look at a calendar."

SSL hasn't been a standard in use for nearly thirty years, but we still use the word. We discuss why that is, what else we might say, and the expected effect of Merkle Tree Certificates (MTC) on our technical vocabulary.

With the upcoming deprecation of client authentication using publicly trusted TLS certificates, we go over the common use cases for these certificates. We discuss the reasons public trust is often chosen and how to transition away from it.

Anthropic recently announced that Mythos has found mathematical weakness in the core algorithm for the third-round NIST PQC candidate HAWK, effectively halving its effective key strength. Mythos also developed a faster attack on a round-reduced version of AES-128. These are not implementation attacks but mathematical attacks on the core cryptography. We discuss the massive implications of these de...

A newly revealed flaw in Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) allows an attacker to improperly obtain cryptographic credentials for an agent. We discuss the implications that this flaw Certighost (pronounced sert-uh-GHOST) has for agentic AI at large.

Because of a change in the drop-dead date, we have observed confusion in the timeline for deprecation of client authentication and mTLS for public TLS certificates. This is an inflexible deadline, and enterprises that are not ready risk outage. In this episode we spell out these dates very clearly.

In our series on digital identity for AI agents, we discuss FAPI 2.0 as an option.

In our ongoing series on digital identity for agents, we have previous discussed use of certificates for authentication. In this episode we describe how cryptographic proof of possession can enable secure authentication using tokens.

We survey different strategies for securely authenticating agentic AI, including certificates and SPIFFE. We discuss Zero Trust and the Principle of Least Privileges as applied to agents.

Anthropic has announced its intentions to support SPIFFE/SPIRE with the SPIRE server rooted in an "upstream authority," which will require a root private CA rather than allowing self-attestation for agentic AI.

In our episode 640 we defined SPIFFE, which provides digital identity for agentic workloads. In this episode we explain SPIRE (SPIFFE Runtime Environment), the SPIFFE certificate provisioning protocol.

SPIFFE (Secure Production Identity Framework for Everyone) is a standard for digital identity for agentic workloads. In this episode we explain.

Static API keys are a common security practice. In this episode we discuss the risk of these keys being revealed, including directly by the AIs that use them.

Tim shares his very personal experience with would-be catfishers and we talk about how AI is set to change the catfishing attack.

The Baseline Requirements, CT logs, the Bugzilla Bloodbath, shortening certificate lifespans, all these trends serve to enforce a high level of quality and predictability across WebPKI certificates. Nearly twenty years after the introduction of EV SSL, we ask if it has served its purpose and should be retired.

Dustin Moody of NIST joins us to talk about the evolution of standardized cryptography beyond the current PQC efforts. Topics include maintaining visibility on cryptography presently in use, 50 years of RSA, and cryptographic heterogeny.

Bas Westerbaan of Cloudflare joins us to discuss recent information that heightens concerns about Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and its vulnerability to a cryptographically relevant quantum computer (CRQC). We pose the question do we need to deprecate ECC in advance of our migration to ML-DSA and other PQC algorithms.

A new Executive Order (EO) moves the deadline for ML-DSA deployment up to 2031. We talk about why this happened and its implications on government, the technology industry, and enterprises around the globe.