8 ms·

Running a Certificate Transparency log

160 points by Metalnem 1y ago

agwa 1y ago
Sunlight and static-ct-api are a breath of fresh air in the CT log space. Traditional CT log implementations were built on databases (because that's the easiest way to implement the old API) and were over-complicated due to a misplaced desire for high write availability. This made operating a CT log difficult and expensive (some operators were spending upwards of $100k/year). Consequentially, there have been a rash of CT log failures and few organizations willing to run logs. I'm extremely excited by how Sunlight and static-ct-api are changing this.
- eddythompson80 1y ago
  I wonder if this is the solution something like SponsorBlock is looking for[1][2]. They have a similar-ish problem. How to replicate crowdsourced data that trickles in slowly, but ideally you want replicated quickly. WAL replication, rsync, bittorrent, etc all things that don't quite work as needed. [1] https://github.com/mchangrh/sb-mirror/blob/main/docs/breakdown.md https://github.com/mchangrh/sb-mirror/blob/main/docs/breakdo... [2] https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock/issues/1570 https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock/issues/1570
tonymet 1y ago
Is any amateur or professional auditing done on the CA system? Something akin to amateur radio auditing? Consumers and publishers take certificates and certs for granted. I see many broken certs, or brands using the wrong certs and domains for their services. SSL/TLS has done well to prevent eavesdropping, but it hasn't done well to establish trust and identity.
- sleevi 1y ago
  All the time. Many CA distrust events involved some degree of “amateurs” reporting issues. While I hesitate to call commenters like agwa an amateur, it certainly was not professionally sponsored work by root programs or CAs. This is a key thing that Certificate Transparency enables: amateurs, academics, and the public at large to report CA issues. At the same time, it sounds like the issues you describe aren’t CA/issuance issues, but rather, simple misconfigurations. Those aren’t incidents for the ecosystem, although definitely can be disruptive to the site, but I also wouldn’t expect them to call trust or identity into disrepute. That’d be like arguing my drivers license is invalid if I handed you my passport; giving you the wrong doc doesn’t invalidate the claims of either, just doesn’t address your need.
  - tonymet 1y ago
    it seems more ad-hoc, bounty-driven , rather than systematic. is that a fair perspective?
    - agwa 1y ago
      I wish there were bounties :-) There is systematic checking - e.g. crt.sh continuously runs linters on certificates found in CT logs, I continuously monitor domains which are likely to be used in test certificates (e.g. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1496088 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1496088), and it appears the Chrome root program has started doing some continuous compliance monitoring based on CT as well. But there is certainly a lot of ad-hoc checking by community members and academics, which as Sleevi said is one of the great things that CT enables.
      - tonymet 1y ago
        Thanks for highlighting that— and for the efforts to assemble this project. Honestly before this post about the CT logs i hadn’t been aware of systematic auditing being done.
- Spivak 1y ago
  I think over the years trust and identity have gone out of scope for TLS—I think for the better. Your identity is your domain and it's not TLS's problem to connect that identity to any real life person or legal entity. I'm sure you still can buy EV certs but no one really cares about them anymore. Certainly browsers no longer care about them. And TLS makes no claim on the trustworthiness of the site you're connecting to, just that the owner of the cert proved control of the domain and that your connection is encrypted. I can't even imagine how much a pain it would be to try and moderate certs based on some consistent international notion of trustworthiness. I think the best you could hope to do is have 3rd parties like the BBB sign your cert as a way of them "vouching" for you.
  - NovemberWhiskey 1y ago
    Meet the QWAC. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_website_authentication_certificate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_website_authentica...
- oasisbob 1y ago
  Yup, it happens. There was a case I remember where a CA was issuing certs using the .int TLD for their own internal use, which it should not be doing. Happened to see it in the CT logs, and when that CA next came up for discussion on the Mozilla dev security policy list, their failure to address and disclose the misissuance in a timely manner was enough to stop the process to approve their request for EV recognition, and it ended in a denial from Mozilla.
- dlgeek 1y ago
  Yes. All CAs trusted by browsers have to go through WebTRUST or ETSI audits by accredited auditors. See https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/security-group/certs/policy/#3-documentation https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/secu... and https://www.ccadb.org/auditors https://www.ccadb.org/auditors and https://www.ccadb.org/policy#51-audit-statement-content https://www.ccadb.org/policy#51-audit-statement-content
  - tptacek 1y ago
    As I understand them, these are accounting audits, similar (if perhaps more detail) to a SOC2. The real thing keeping CAs from being gravely insecure is the CA death penalty Google will inflict if a CA suffers a security breach that results in any kind of misissuance.
    - creatonez 1y ago
      It's not just Google, but also Mozilla, Apple, and Microsoft. They all work together on shutting down bad behavior. Apple and Microsoft mainly have power because they control Safari and Edge. Firefox is of course dying, but they still wield significant power because their trusted CA list is copied by all the major Linux distributions that run on servers.
      - tptacek 1y ago
        Sure. I think Google and Mozilla have been the prime movers to date, but everyone has upped their game since Verisign/Symantec.
  - tonymet 1y ago
    that's good news about the CA's , but how about the publisher certificates that are in use?
torbid 1y ago
These sound like good improvements but I still don't really get why the ct log server is responsible for storage at all (as a 3rd party entity).. Couldn't it just be responsible for its own key and signing incremental advances to a log that all publishers are responsible for storing up to their latest submission to it? If it needed to restart and some last publisher couldn't give it its latest entries, well they would deserve that rollback to the last publish from a good publisher..
- michaelt 1y ago
  The point of CT logging is to ensure a person can ask "What certificates were issued for example.com?" or "What certificates were issued by Example CA?" and get an answer that's correct - even if the website or CA fucked up or got hacked and certificates are in the hands of people who've tried to cover their tracks. This requires the logs be held by independent parties, and retained forever.
  - torbid 1y ago
    I understand that. But.. If 12 CAs send to the same log and all have to save up to their latest entry not to be declared incompetent to be CAs, how would all 12 possibly do a worse job of providing that log on demand than a random 3rd party who has no particular investment at risk? (Every other CA in a log is a 3rd party with respect to any other, but they are one who can actually be told to keep something indefinitely because they would also need to return it for legitimizing their own issuance.)
    - michaelt 1y ago
      As far as I know, CAs don't have to "save up to their latest entry" The info they get back from the CT log may be a Merkle Hash that partly depends on the other entries in the log - but they don't have to store the entire log, just a short checksum.
      - torbid 1y ago
        Right and this is what I am saying is backwards with the protocol. It is not in anyone's best interest that some random 3rd party takes responsibility to preserve data for CAs indefinitely to prove things. The CA should identify where it has its copy in the extension and looking at one CAs copy one would find every other CAs copy of the same CT log.
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- eddythompson80 1y ago
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johnklos 1y ago
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- johnklos 1y ago
  I suppose we've got a lot of Google fans here! Do you like not being able to contact anyone there? You could be a Youtube creator with a million followers and you'll never correspond with anyone with any control over anything at Google ;)
  - danpalmer 1y ago
    This just doesn't match my experience. People love to say it, but when we had GSuite issues at my previous workplace we spoke to GSuite support and had a resolution quickly. When we had GCP queries we spoke to our account manager who gave us a technical contact who escalated internally and got us the advice we needed. When we asked about a particular feature we were added to the alpha stage of an in-development product and spoke with the team directly about that. I've got friends who have had various issues with Pixel phones over the years and they just contact support and get a replacement or fix or whatever. Meanwhile I've seen colleagues go down the rabbit hole of AWS support and have a terrible time. For us it was fine but nothing special, I've never experienced the amazing support that I've heard some people talk about. We were a <100 person company with a spend quite a bit less than many companies of our size. From what I've heard from YouTubers with a million followers, they have account managers and they always seem to encourage talking to account managers.
    - johnklos 1y ago
      But you're giving Google money. I should've qualified what I wrote, but what I mean is that no matter who you are, if you don't know someone there and aren't paying them money, there's no way to communicate with humans there. It's like companies that won't let you sign up unless you give them a cell phone number, but not only do they not have a number themselves, they don't even have email. Or, for companies like Verizon, they don't have email, but they have phone numbers with countless layers of "voice assistants" you can't skip. It's a new way of "communicating" that's just crazymaking.
dboreham 1y ago
Add an incentive mechanism to motivate runn a server, and hey it's a blockchain. But those have no practical application so it must not be a blockchain..
- schoen 1y ago
  There is some historical connection between CT and blockchains. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/squarezooko http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/squarezooko Ben Laurie read this post by Aaron Swartz while thinking about how a certificate transparency mechanism could work. (I think Peter Eckersley may have told him about it!) The existence proof confirmed that we sort of knew how to make useful append-only data structures with anonymous writers. CT dropped the incentive mechanism and the distributed log updates in favor of more centralized log operation, federated logging, and out-of-band audits of identified log operators' behavior. This mostly means that CT lacks the censorship resistance of a blockchain. It also means that someone has to directly pay to operate it, without recouping the expenses of maintaining the log via block rewards. And browser developers have to manually confirm logs' availability properties in order to decide which logs to trust (with -- returning to the censorship resistance property -- no theoretical guarantee that there will always be suitable logs available in the future). This has worked really well so far, but everyone is clear on the trade-offs, I think.
- Dylan16807 1y ago
  Yes, that is correct. (Other than the word "must"? I'm not entirely sure your intent there.) This is close to a blockchain in some ways, but a blockchain-style incentive mechanism would be a net negative, so it doesn't have that. If you figure out a good way to involve an incentive structure like that, let us know!
- deleted 1y ago
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- some_random 1y ago
  I'm happy to offer an incentive of 100 Cert Points (issued by me, redeemable with me at my discretion) to anyone running CT /s In all seriousness, the incentive is primarily in having the data imo
gslin 1y ago
The original article seems deleted, so https://archive.ph/TTXnK https://archive.ph/TTXnK this.
- FiloSottile 1y ago
  My bad! This is what I get for doing a deploy to fix the layout while the post is on HN. Back up now.
  - ysnp 1y ago
    https://words.filippo.io/passkey-encryption/ https://words.filippo.io/passkey-encryption/ also seems to be gone?
    - FiloSottile 1y ago
      That instead was a draft that should have not gone out yet, but the API filter didn’t work :) I’ll mail that one towards the end of the week.
gucci-on-fleek 1y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20250707205158/https://words.filippo.io/run-sunlight/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250707205158/https://words.fil...
gslin 1y ago
> You Should Run a Certificate Transparency Log And: > Bandwidth: 2 – 3 Gbps outbound. I am not sure if this is correct, is 2-3Gbps really required for CT?
- remus 1y ago
  It seems like Fillipo has been working quite closely with people running existing ct logs to try and reduce the requirements for running a log, so I'd assume he has a fairly realistic handle on the requirements. Do you have a reason to think his number is off?
  - ApeWithCompiler 1y ago
    > or an engineer looking to justify an overprovisioned homelab In Germany 2 – 3 Gbps outbound is a milestone, even for enterprises. As a individual I am privileged to have 250Mbs down/50Mbs up. So it`s at least off by what any individual in this country could imagine.
    - jeroenhd 1y ago
      You can rent 10gbps service from various VPS providers if you can't get the bandwidth at home. Your home ISP will probably have something to say about a continuous 2gbps upstream anyway, whether it's through data caps or fair use policy. Still, even in Germany, with its particularly lacking internet infrastructure for the wealth the country possesses, M-net is slowly rolling out 5gbps internet.
    - nucleardog 1y ago
      Yeah the requirements aren't too steep here. I could easily host this in my "homelab" if I gave a friend a key to access my utility room if I were away / unavailable. But 2-3Gbps of bandwidth makes this pretty inaccessible unless you're just offloading the bulk of this on to CloudFront/CloudFlare at which point... it seems to me we don't really have more people running logs in a very meaningful sense, just somebody paying Amazon a _lot_ of money. If I'm doing my math right this is something like 960TB/mo which is like a $7.2m/yr CloudFront bill. Even some lesser-known CDN providers we're still talking like $60k/yr. Seems to me the bandwidth requirement means this is only going to work if you already have some unmetered connections laying around. If anyone wants to pay the build out costs to put an unmetered 10Gbps line out to my house I'll happily donate some massively overprovisioned hardware, redundant power, etc!
ncrmro 1y ago
Seems like something that might be useful to store on Arweave a block chain for storage. Fees go to an endowment that’s has been calculated to far exceed the cost of growing storage
cypherpunks01 1y ago
How does the CT system generally accomplish the goal of append-only entries, with public transparency of when entries were made? Is this actually a good use case for (gasp) blockchains? Or would it be too much data?
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udev4096 1y ago
Instead of mainstreaming DANE, you want me to help a bunch of centralized CAs? No thanks. DANE is the future, it will happen
- jcgl 1y ago
  I like the idea and I like DNSSEC too (well, well enough at least—lots of tooling could be better), but DANE can’t catch on faster than DNSSEC does. And DNSSEC isn’t exactly taking the world by storm.
  - udev4096 1y ago
    Even if everyone catches up on DANE, we still have ICANN controlling the registrars and root nameservers. It's absolutely crazy how everyone (incl. me, unfortunately) gave in to the centralized DNS model
    - jcgl 1y ago
      Two things: 1. Relying on just ICANN instead of ICANN+CA Forum would be an improvement. I assume, at least? Thinking about it though, the CA Forum setup with transparency logs and such does provide some safeguards against CA operator abuse. Those are safeguards that wouldn't be available in a DANE-only world where nameserver operators could surreptitiously inject malicious TLSA records at their whim. That could be safeguarded by DNSSEC where the domain owner does their own signing and then the nameserver operator simply serves those pre-signed records. However, that's a lot of complication. Gonna have to think about this... 2. Tbh I am not convinced of the virtues of decentralized DNS. If people use different roots in practice, then we lose the utility of a single view of names. At its most extreme, you then would not be able to reliably do things like publish a URL. However, maybe you're suggesting that DNS shouldn't be centralized with the root, but rather have a constellation of TLDs as roots? Obviously that would require shipping resolvers with hardcoded roots and wouldn't be robust when new TLDs are brought online. But maybe there'd be value in that...I'm not convinced yet though.
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baobun 1y ago
For the downstream side Mozilla has done some great progress with CRLite, which I think hasn't gotten enough attention. https://youtube.com/watch?v=gnB76DQI1GE&t=19517s https://youtube.com/watch?v=gnB76DQI1GE&t=19517s https://research.mozilla.org/files/2025/04/clubcards_for_the_webpki.pdf https://research.mozilla.org/files/2025/04/clubcards_for_the...
1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
Original HN title: "You Should Run a Certificiate Transparency Log"
- deleted 1y ago
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160 points by Metalnem 1y ago

agwa 1y ago

Sunlight and static-ct-api are a breath of fresh air in the CT log space. Traditional CT log implementations were built on databases (because that's the easiest way to implement the old API) and were over-complicated due to a misplaced desire for high write availability. This made operating a CT log difficult and expensive (some operators were spending upwards of $100k/year). Consequentially, there have been a rash of CT log failures and few organizations willing to run logs. I'm extremely excited by how Sunlight and static-ct-api are changing this.

eddythompson80 1y ago
I wonder if this is the solution something like SponsorBlock is looking for[1][2]. They have a similar-ish problem. How to replicate crowdsourced data that trickles in slowly, but ideally you want replicated quickly. WAL replication, rsync, bittorrent, etc all things that don't quite work as needed. [1] https://github.com/mchangrh/sb-mirror/blob/main/docs/breakdown.md https://github.com/mchangrh/sb-mirror/blob/main/docs/breakdo... [2] https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock/issues/1570 https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock/issues/1570

tonymet 1y ago

Is any amateur or professional auditing done on the CA system? Something akin to amateur radio auditing? Consumers and publishers take certificates and certs for granted. I see many broken certs, or brands using the wrong certs and domains for their services. SSL/TLS has done well to prevent eavesdropping, but it hasn't done well to establish trust and identity.

sleevi 1y ago
All the time. Many CA distrust events involved some degree of “amateurs” reporting issues. While I hesitate to call commenters like agwa an amateur, it certainly was not professionally sponsored work by root programs or CAs. This is a key thing that Certificate Transparency enables: amateurs, academics, and the public at large to report CA issues. At the same time, it sounds like the issues you describe aren’t CA/issuance issues, but rather, simple misconfigurations. Those aren’t incidents for the ecosystem, although definitely can be disruptive to the site, but I also wouldn’t expect them to call trust or identity into disrepute. That’d be like arguing my drivers license is invalid if I handed you my passport; giving you the wrong doc doesn’t invalidate the claims of either, just doesn’t address your need.
- tonymet 1y ago
  it seems more ad-hoc, bounty-driven , rather than systematic. is that a fair perspective?
  - agwa 1y ago
    I wish there were bounties :-) There is systematic checking - e.g. crt.sh continuously runs linters on certificates found in CT logs, I continuously monitor domains which are likely to be used in test certificates (e.g. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1496088 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1496088), and it appears the Chrome root program has started doing some continuous compliance monitoring based on CT as well. But there is certainly a lot of ad-hoc checking by community members and academics, which as Sleevi said is one of the great things that CT enables.
    - tonymet 1y ago
      Thanks for highlighting that— and for the efforts to assemble this project. Honestly before this post about the CT logs i hadn’t been aware of systematic auditing being done.
Spivak 1y ago
I think over the years trust and identity have gone out of scope for TLS—I think for the better. Your identity is your domain and it's not TLS's problem to connect that identity to any real life person or legal entity. I'm sure you still can buy EV certs but no one really cares about them anymore. Certainly browsers no longer care about them. And TLS makes no claim on the trustworthiness of the site you're connecting to, just that the owner of the cert proved control of the domain and that your connection is encrypted. I can't even imagine how much a pain it would be to try and moderate certs based on some consistent international notion of trustworthiness. I think the best you could hope to do is have 3rd parties like the BBB sign your cert as a way of them "vouching" for you.
- NovemberWhiskey 1y ago
  Meet the QWAC. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_website_authentication_certificate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_website_authentica...
oasisbob 1y ago
Yup, it happens. There was a case I remember where a CA was issuing certs using the .int TLD for their own internal use, which it should not be doing. Happened to see it in the CT logs, and when that CA next came up for discussion on the Mozilla dev security policy list, their failure to address and disclose the misissuance in a timely manner was enough to stop the process to approve their request for EV recognition, and it ended in a denial from Mozilla.
dlgeek 1y ago
Yes. All CAs trusted by browsers have to go through WebTRUST or ETSI audits by accredited auditors. See https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/security-group/certs/policy/#3-documentation https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/secu... and https://www.ccadb.org/auditors https://www.ccadb.org/auditors and https://www.ccadb.org/policy#51-audit-statement-content https://www.ccadb.org/policy#51-audit-statement-content
- tptacek 1y ago
  As I understand them, these are accounting audits, similar (if perhaps more detail) to a SOC2. The real thing keeping CAs from being gravely insecure is the CA death penalty Google will inflict if a CA suffers a security breach that results in any kind of misissuance.
  - creatonez 1y ago
    It's not just Google, but also Mozilla, Apple, and Microsoft. They all work together on shutting down bad behavior. Apple and Microsoft mainly have power because they control Safari and Edge. Firefox is of course dying, but they still wield significant power because their trusted CA list is copied by all the major Linux distributions that run on servers.
    - tptacek 1y ago
      Sure. I think Google and Mozilla have been the prime movers to date, but everyone has upped their game since Verisign/Symantec.
- tonymet 1y ago
  that's good news about the CA's , but how about the publisher certificates that are in use?

torbid 1y ago

These sound like good improvements but I still don't really get why the ct log server is responsible for storage at all (as a 3rd party entity).. Couldn't it just be responsible for its own key and signing incremental advances to a log that all publishers are responsible for storing up to their latest submission to it? If it needed to restart and some last publisher couldn't give it its latest entries, well they would deserve that rollback to the last publish from a good publisher..

michaelt 1y ago
The point of CT logging is to ensure a person can ask "What certificates were issued for example.com?" or "What certificates were issued by Example CA?" and get an answer that's correct - even if the website or CA fucked up or got hacked and certificates are in the hands of people who've tried to cover their tracks. This requires the logs be held by independent parties, and retained forever.
- torbid 1y ago
  I understand that. But.. If 12 CAs send to the same log and all have to save up to their latest entry not to be declared incompetent to be CAs, how would all 12 possibly do a worse job of providing that log on demand than a random 3rd party who has no particular investment at risk? (Every other CA in a log is a 3rd party with respect to any other, but they are one who can actually be told to keep something indefinitely because they would also need to return it for legitimizing their own issuance.)
  - michaelt 1y ago
    As far as I know, CAs don't have to "save up to their latest entry" The info they get back from the CT log may be a Merkle Hash that partly depends on the other entries in the log - but they don't have to store the entire log, just a short checksum.
    - torbid 1y ago
      Right and this is what I am saying is backwards with the protocol. It is not in anyone's best interest that some random 3rd party takes responsibility to preserve data for CAs indefinitely to prove things. The CA should identify where it has its copy in the extension and looking at one CAs copy one would find every other CAs copy of the same CT log.

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eddythompson80 1y ago
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johnklos 1y ago

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johnklos 1y ago
I suppose we've got a lot of Google fans here! Do you like not being able to contact anyone there? You could be a Youtube creator with a million followers and you'll never correspond with anyone with any control over anything at Google ;)
- danpalmer 1y ago
  This just doesn't match my experience. People love to say it, but when we had GSuite issues at my previous workplace we spoke to GSuite support and had a resolution quickly. When we had GCP queries we spoke to our account manager who gave us a technical contact who escalated internally and got us the advice we needed. When we asked about a particular feature we were added to the alpha stage of an in-development product and spoke with the team directly about that. I've got friends who have had various issues with Pixel phones over the years and they just contact support and get a replacement or fix or whatever. Meanwhile I've seen colleagues go down the rabbit hole of AWS support and have a terrible time. For us it was fine but nothing special, I've never experienced the amazing support that I've heard some people talk about. We were a <100 person company with a spend quite a bit less than many companies of our size. From what I've heard from YouTubers with a million followers, they have account managers and they always seem to encourage talking to account managers.
  - johnklos 1y ago
    But you're giving Google money. I should've qualified what I wrote, but what I mean is that no matter who you are, if you don't know someone there and aren't paying them money, there's no way to communicate with humans there. It's like companies that won't let you sign up unless you give them a cell phone number, but not only do they not have a number themselves, they don't even have email. Or, for companies like Verizon, they don't have email, but they have phone numbers with countless layers of "voice assistants" you can't skip. It's a new way of "communicating" that's just crazymaking.

dboreham 1y ago

Add an incentive mechanism to motivate runn a server, and hey it's a blockchain. But those have no practical application so it must not be a blockchain..

schoen 1y ago
There is some historical connection between CT and blockchains. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/squarezooko http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/squarezooko Ben Laurie read this post by Aaron Swartz while thinking about how a certificate transparency mechanism could work. (I think Peter Eckersley may have told him about it!) The existence proof confirmed that we sort of knew how to make useful append-only data structures with anonymous writers. CT dropped the incentive mechanism and the distributed log updates in favor of more centralized log operation, federated logging, and out-of-band audits of identified log operators' behavior. This mostly means that CT lacks the censorship resistance of a blockchain. It also means that someone has to directly pay to operate it, without recouping the expenses of maintaining the log via block rewards. And browser developers have to manually confirm logs' availability properties in order to decide which logs to trust (with -- returning to the censorship resistance property -- no theoretical guarantee that there will always be suitable logs available in the future). This has worked really well so far, but everyone is clear on the trade-offs, I think.
Dylan16807 1y ago
Yes, that is correct. (Other than the word "must"? I'm not entirely sure your intent there.) This is close to a blockchain in some ways, but a blockchain-style incentive mechanism would be a net negative, so it doesn't have that. If you figure out a good way to involve an incentive structure like that, let us know!
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some_random 1y ago
I'm happy to offer an incentive of 100 Cert Points (issued by me, redeemable with me at my discretion) to anyone running CT /s In all seriousness, the incentive is primarily in having the data imo

gslin 1y ago

The original article seems deleted, so https://archive.ph/TTXnK https://archive.ph/TTXnK this.

FiloSottile 1y ago
My bad! This is what I get for doing a deploy to fix the layout while the post is on HN. Back up now.
- ysnp 1y ago
  https://words.filippo.io/passkey-encryption/ https://words.filippo.io/passkey-encryption/ also seems to be gone?
  - FiloSottile 1y ago
    That instead was a draft that should have not gone out yet, but the API filter didn’t work :) I’ll mail that one towards the end of the week.

gucci-on-fleek 1y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20250707205158/https://words.filippo.io/run-sunlight/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250707205158/https://words.fil...

gslin 1y ago

> You Should Run a Certificate Transparency Log And: > Bandwidth: 2 – 3 Gbps outbound. I am not sure if this is correct, is 2-3Gbps really required for CT?

remus 1y ago
It seems like Fillipo has been working quite closely with people running existing ct logs to try and reduce the requirements for running a log, so I'd assume he has a fairly realistic handle on the requirements. Do you have a reason to think his number is off?
- ApeWithCompiler 1y ago
  > or an engineer looking to justify an overprovisioned homelab In Germany 2 – 3 Gbps outbound is a milestone, even for enterprises. As a individual I am privileged to have 250Mbs down/50Mbs up. So it`s at least off by what any individual in this country could imagine.
  - jeroenhd 1y ago
    You can rent 10gbps service from various VPS providers if you can't get the bandwidth at home. Your home ISP will probably have something to say about a continuous 2gbps upstream anyway, whether it's through data caps or fair use policy. Still, even in Germany, with its particularly lacking internet infrastructure for the wealth the country possesses, M-net is slowly rolling out 5gbps internet.
  - nucleardog 1y ago
    Yeah the requirements aren't too steep here. I could easily host this in my "homelab" if I gave a friend a key to access my utility room if I were away / unavailable. But 2-3Gbps of bandwidth makes this pretty inaccessible unless you're just offloading the bulk of this on to CloudFront/CloudFlare at which point... it seems to me we don't really have more people running logs in a very meaningful sense, just somebody paying Amazon a _lot_ of money. If I'm doing my math right this is something like 960TB/mo which is like a $7.2m/yr CloudFront bill. Even some lesser-known CDN providers we're still talking like $60k/yr. Seems to me the bandwidth requirement means this is only going to work if you already have some unmetered connections laying around. If anyone wants to pay the build out costs to put an unmetered 10Gbps line out to my house I'll happily donate some massively overprovisioned hardware, redundant power, etc!

ncrmro 1y ago

Seems like something that might be useful to store on Arweave a block chain for storage. Fees go to an endowment that’s has been calculated to far exceed the cost of growing storage

cypherpunks01 1y ago

How does the CT system generally accomplish the goal of append-only entries, with public transparency of when entries were made? Is this actually a good use case for (gasp) blockchains? Or would it be too much data?

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udev4096 1y ago

Instead of mainstreaming DANE, you want me to help a bunch of centralized CAs? No thanks. DANE is the future, it will happen

jcgl 1y ago
I like the idea and I like DNSSEC too (well, well enough at least—lots of tooling could be better), but DANE can’t catch on faster than DNSSEC does. And DNSSEC isn’t exactly taking the world by storm.
- udev4096 1y ago
  Even if everyone catches up on DANE, we still have ICANN controlling the registrars and root nameservers. It's absolutely crazy how everyone (incl. me, unfortunately) gave in to the centralized DNS model
  - jcgl 1y ago
    Two things: 1. Relying on just ICANN instead of ICANN+CA Forum would be an improvement. I assume, at least? Thinking about it though, the CA Forum setup with transparency logs and such does provide some safeguards against CA operator abuse. Those are safeguards that wouldn't be available in a DANE-only world where nameserver operators could surreptitiously inject malicious TLSA records at their whim. That could be safeguarded by DNSSEC where the domain owner does their own signing and then the nameserver operator simply serves those pre-signed records. However, that's a lot of complication. Gonna have to think about this... 2. Tbh I am not convinced of the virtues of decentralized DNS. If people use different roots in practice, then we lose the utility of a single view of names. At its most extreme, you then would not be able to reliably do things like publish a URL. However, maybe you're suggesting that DNS shouldn't be centralized with the root, but rather have a constellation of TLDs as roots? Obviously that would require shipping resolvers with hardcoded roots and wouldn't be robust when new TLDs are brought online. But maybe there'd be value in that...I'm not convinced yet though.
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baobun 1y ago

For the downstream side Mozilla has done some great progress with CRLite, which I think hasn't gotten enough attention. https://youtube.com/watch?v=gnB76DQI1GE&t=19517s https://youtube.com/watch?v=gnB76DQI1GE&t=19517s https://research.mozilla.org/files/2025/04/clubcards_for_the_webpki.pdf https://research.mozilla.org/files/2025/04/clubcards_for_the...

1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago

Original HN title: "You Should Run a Certificiate Transparency Log"

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