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You don't need a "root certificate". Just publish a public key in your DNS TXT records. ACME is just that anyways but with extra (pointless) steps. The whole

You don't need a "root certificate". Just publish a public key in your DNS TXT records. ACME is just that anyways but with extra (pointless) steps. The whole SSL certificate grift is just a way to extort money out of nothing.

mdemare 8d ago
Ok, but now you need to trust DNSSEC.
- necovek 8d ago
  The point GP was making is that DNS-record based ACME mechanism for verification of ownership implies trust in the domain name owner (or really, anyone who can edit records in the domain zone), making the issuance of a certificate actually superfluous. DNSSEC is probably not even used, though I never checked. Eg. as a domain owner, you will put a cryptographic hash into your DNS zone so a CA can validate you have control over it, and then issue a different cryptographic hash derived from their private key, and browser will use their public key to validate this cryptographic hash (TLS cert) is valid. So we could simply push public key into a DNS zone, and browsers could use it to decrypt the traffic encrypted by the private key from the server hosted under that DNS name: no CAs needed, similar to SSH except the DNS-ownership-implied-trust component. "Extended validation" certificates involved a lot more (in theory, checking true ownership, business address, physical presence, etc), but nobody really cares about these, and with the push to automated renewal and 45-day expiration dates by 2028, it's going to make even less sense. Edit: I realize now that you may be referring to the fact that MITM DNS server can inject a different public key in there and thus DNSSEC is required — you are absolutely right, and this is a good and important point.
  - tptacek 8d ago
    ... but then, as they point out, you have to trust DNSSEC, and that's pretty fraught --- probably more fraught than trusting a CA.
tptacek 8d ago
It's all an elaborate scheme by the ISRG: compete all the commercial CAs out of existence, and then charge A MILLION DOLLARS for a certificate renewal. I've seen this movie before.

mdemare 8d ago

Ok, but now you need to trust DNSSEC.

necovek 8d ago
The point GP was making is that DNS-record based ACME mechanism for verification of ownership implies trust in the domain name owner (or really, anyone who can edit records in the domain zone), making the issuance of a certificate actually superfluous. DNSSEC is probably not even used, though I never checked. Eg. as a domain owner, you will put a cryptographic hash into your DNS zone so a CA can validate you have control over it, and then issue a different cryptographic hash derived from their private key, and browser will use their public key to validate this cryptographic hash (TLS cert) is valid. So we could simply push public key into a DNS zone, and browsers could use it to decrypt the traffic encrypted by the private key from the server hosted under that DNS name: no CAs needed, similar to SSH except the DNS-ownership-implied-trust component. "Extended validation" certificates involved a lot more (in theory, checking true ownership, business address, physical presence, etc), but nobody really cares about these, and with the push to automated renewal and 45-day expiration dates by 2028, it's going to make even less sense. Edit: I realize now that you may be referring to the fact that MITM DNS server can inject a different public key in there and thus DNSSEC is required — you are absolutely right, and this is a good and important point.
- tptacek 8d ago
  ... but then, as they point out, you have to trust DNSSEC, and that's pretty fraught --- probably more fraught than trusting a CA.

tptacek 8d ago

It's all an elaborate scheme by the ISRG: compete all the commercial CAs out of existence, and then charge A MILLION DOLLARS for a certificate renewal. I've seen this movie before.