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.
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".
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.
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.)
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 36.2 ms ] threadThe 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.
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.