So I recently argued with our Security Guy at work, about how important it is to phase out SHA1-signed Root CA certs from our product’s root store.
My argument was like this
* it is a self-signed cert (Root CA, not intermediate)
* the way it becomes trusted is not through the signature
* the actual thing you are trusting is the public key, not the signature
* also, no browser, OS, or Java lib publishers are removing these
His argument was like this
* standards like NIST say don’t trust SHA-1 for anything important
* if we keep them, it’s not a good look for us
* we are currently not using those certs (e.g. Entrust two oldest CA’s) for anything at the moment
I asked him to explain the risk or a specific attack where breaking the signature (not the key) compromises anything, and apparently he “doesn’t have time to explain the basics to me” and I should go google it. Hmm
#sha1 #ssl #rootCA