How Digital Certificates can be Misused
Оnline соmmuniсаtiоn аnd dаtа shаring рrасtiсes rely heаvily оn digitаl сertifiсаtes tо enсryрt dаtа аs well аs аuthentiсаte systems аnd рeорle. There have been mаny discussions about the сrасks starting to develop in the certificate-bаsed Рubliс Key Infrаstruсture (РKI) оn the web. Let’s соnsider hоw the сerts аre tyрiсаlly used аnd misused tо рreраre fоr and exрlоring ways in which the сertificate ecosystem саn be strengthened.
What are Digital Certificates?
A Digital Certificate is an electronic “password” that permits an individual organization to exchange data securely over the web using the general public key infrastructure (PKI). Digital Certificate is additionally referred to as a public key certificate or identity certificate.
Why Do We Need Digital Certificates?
The number of individuals and businesses online is constantly rising. As access becomes faster and cheaper, people will spend even longer time connected to the web for private communication and business transactions.
The Internet is an open communications network that wasn’t originally designed with security in mind. Criminals have found they will exploit its vulnerabilities for fraudulent gain. If the web is to succeed as a business and communications tool, users must be ready to communicate securely.
Misuse of Digital Certificates :
Digital certificates are being misused repeatedly in recent years. Bad actors have been abusing them to conduct cyberattacks against private entities, individuals, and government organizations.
- Cyber Attacks (Man-in-the-middle attacks): SSL certificates are the privileged mechanism for ensuring that secure websites really are who they assert they are. Typically, once we access a secure website, a padlock is displayed within the address bar. Before the icon appears, the location first presents a digital certificate, signed by a trusted “root” authority, that attests to its identity and encryption keys. Unfortunately web browsers, due to improper design and lack of efficient verification processes, accept the certificates issued by the trusted CA, albeit it’s an unexpected one.
- CAs issued improper certificates: Improper certificates are issued by the CAs and hackers use them for cyber attacks. In one of the foremost blatant cases, DigiCert mistakenly sold a certificate to a non-existent company. That digital certificate was then used to sign malware utilized in cyber attacks.
- Malware installed illegitimate certificates: Configuring infected systems to trust them. As an example, a malicious Browser Helper Object (BHO) installed a fake Verisign cert as a Trusted Root Certificate Authority after infecting the system to eliminate security warnings. In another example, spyware acted as an area proxy for SSL/TLS traffic and installed a rogue certificate to hide this behavior. Installing a fake root CA certificate on the compromised system also can assist with phishing scams because they permit the attacker to line up a fake domain that uses SSL/TLS and passes certificate validation steps.
How AppViewX Helps You Prevent the Misuses:
- Secure Vault: Digital signature certificates are very much needed to be secured. To stop any abuse of your computerized signature, the appropriate response is as simple as guaranteeing that your private key do not reach the wrong hands. For this, AppViewX provides a Secure vault using where all private keys and device passwords can be stored securely.
- Direct Device Push: Avoid misplacing or the risk of sniffing data from the network while pushing or installing the certificate to the end device using AppViewX. AppViewX provides Direct Secure push to different vendors for ADC (F5, A10, etc) , Servers (IIS , Linux ,etc).
- Role Based Access: Using the RBAC feature, one can restrict the user access by defining access privileges to private keys and other certificate actions.
- Strict Policy: While creating certificates, one can configure strict policy (which can be used with RBAC) and restrict any malicious certificate to be issued in the name of the organization. One can also configure CSR parameters in the policy and restrict users from using any other values to maintain organization standards.
- Automate Domain Verification (validation): Using AppviewX Automation+, we can integrate and get the domain verified (a process that Certificate Authority follows to make sure requested certificate will not be used for malicious activity and is created for an authentic organization) without manual efforts. We can Place an order to the CA and modify the DNS record (Add TXT or CNAME record) to get the domain verified.
- Download Certificate in different formats: AppViewX provides a wide range of formats for certificate download depending upon the usage and avoids any unnecessary use of information.
