Many sites reusing Heartbleed-compromised private keys

Many sites reusing Heartbleed-compromised private keys(zdnet.com)

50 points by eliot_sykes 12 years ago | 10 comments

abritishguy 12 years ago |

You should not be responsible for website security if you don't understand the absolute basics of SSL certificates.

It would be helpful if the CA (or reseller) confirmed (dispay a warning) that you really want to reissue with the same private key and explain the implications of doing so.

When reissuing a certificate the default behaviour should be to revoke the old one after some specified time has elapsed - that is what reissuing is for and what distinguishes it from simply buying a new certificate.

mobiplayer 12 years ago |

This.

The problem is that many people in the industry doesn't really understand the basics. How come is there a leak of your certificate, if that's the public key you're showing to every single client that connects to your SSL enabled site?

I've even seen sysads advising on forums about reissuing certs after Heartbleed, but no word about the keys.

mikeash 12 years ago | |

I think that "no word about the keys" is simply due to a huge gulf in understanding. To the people giving out the advice, it's obvious that "reissue your certificates" implies "with a new private key", so obvious that they can't even imagine someone doing otherwise. It's easy to skip out on the basics that you're sure "everyone knows".

higherpurpose 12 years ago | |

Maybe they should just be advised to use PFS/ECDHE instead (which should be done anyway), and it would solve this problem by itself.

sdevlin 12 years ago | | |

That would not solve the problem of active man-in-the-middle attacks.

mobiplayer 12 years ago | | |

Yes, even renewing your keys and certs doesn't mean any previous communication is not compromised :)

pronoiac 12 years ago |

Ugh. I think it would be better if revocation covered the public key instead of the serial number. (I'll ignore CRL bandwidth costs and the questionable usefulness of revocations.)

aastaneh 12 years ago | |

YUP! I covered that exact subject (http://aminastaneh.net/2014-04-23/misconceptions-about-mitig...), but it didn't catch on in HN.

nodata 12 years ago |

i.e. they re-used the same CSR without realising that the CSR references the old compromised key.

unreal37 12 years ago |

The odds of this being a real issue that will affect anyone are in the tiny fractions of a percent range.