2048 Key Size Requirement

Important Note:

Effective 1 January 2011, Digi-Sign will no longer support any Certificate Signing Request [CSR] generated with a 1024 bit key. This is because NIST, PKIX, WebTrust and other respective security standards no longer consider the 1024 bit key size as secure.

Generate a CSR now >> [1]

Official, Technical Explanation

The fact that NIST, PKIX, WebTrust and other respective security standards and certifications consider the 1024 bit key size as no longer secure and therefore a recommendation is made to use 2048 bit or larger key sizes in X.509 public key certificates. All commercial CAs participating in WebTrust and complying to the latest security standards must follow this recommendation with immediate effect and therefore Digi-Sign must fully comply with this security mandate.

The upgrade to 2048 keys should have no real impact on your server environment as fully patched servers should be capable of handling this size of key. In addition, SSL/TLS clients that support only 128 bit encryption, will be able to verify the signature of the server using a public key certificate with 2048 bit key.

We realise the above security upgrades may initially cause some issues to your organisation but rest assured that it is in your best security interest to follow these security recommendations.

In the event that you mistakenly submit a 1024 bit key, you will be required to re-generate the CSR against a 2048 bit private key and submit your CSR via the certificate request form or to your sales representative. For technical instructions and support, visit the Digi-SSL™ support [2] section of this site.

Generate a CSR now >> [1]

Related Links:

• Official NIST Announcement [3]

• Official RSA Announcement [4]

• Official NSA Announcement [5]

EU Accredited National Certification Service Providers

EU Qualified Certificates & Signatures

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In 2008, Digi-Sign was formally notified of its acceptance as a National Certification Service Provider for the European Union.

A National Certification Service Provider is any organisation recognised by the EU as a Certificate Authority [CA] that issues qualified certificates to the public. Digi-Sign's notification was issued by the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources [34] in Ireland.

This notification is also displayed on the official European Commission web site. Here you will find each member state and the required notification procedure of all accredited National Certification Service Providers, in accordance with Article 11 of Directive 1999/93/EC [33]. Under the listing for Ireland, you will find Digi-Sign is formally acknowledged as an issuer of EU Qualified Certificates [18].

CA Memo

Trusted Root Certificate Authorities & Browser Compatibility Study

On behalf of the Board of Digi-Sign, The Certificate Corporation [Digi-Sign], the following General Release Document is being published as a direct reaction to recent 'information' regarding Trusted Root Certificate Authorities and Browser Compatability. This document shows the recent statements to be factually incorrect or misleading.

As a result of extensive research over a four month period, it was decided that the following interim results should be released:

• 0.2% of users worldwide still use the 7 year old IE4.0. Since January 1, 2002, support for Windows 95/IE4.0 is no longer available from Microsoft. This means no patches, no updates and no security service packs.
  
  
• Internet Explorer 4.x was developed using an 'ancient' engine and is much more friendly for hacker threats than its later versions, therefore it is no longer supported by Microsoft. This browser indicates a lot of threats to its users including:
  
  
  • Embed issue: buffer overrun, exploitable. Microsoft has issued a patch. Vulnerable: IE 4.0, 4.01 Win95/NT.

  
  

  • Buffer overrun in the OBJECT tag. Vulnerable: IE 4.0

  
  

  • Buffer overrun in the JScript external. Microsoft has issued a patch. Vulnerable: IE 4.0, 4.01 Win95/NT

  
  

  • IE can read local files. Vulnerable: IE 3, 4.0, 4.01

  
  

  • IE can read local files and spoof windows. Vulnerable: IE 4.0, 4.01

  
  

  • IE Cross-frame vulnerabilities - %01 bug again. Vulnerable: IE 5.0, 4.x

  
  

  • Favourites vulnerabilities. Vulnerable: IE 5.0, 4.x, Win9x

  
  

  • The release of IE5.0 in 1998, saw a considerable increase in Root CAs with extended expiry dates like 2015, 2020 and beyond.

  
  

• This highlights the significance of the year 1998 and the fact that most CAs, like Digi-Sign created new Roots in this year




• 87.6% of IE browsers in use are IE6.0. 12.2% continue to use IE5.x+. All of these browsers contain Digi-Sign 1998 Roots and those of other major vendors.




• Netscape & Opera represent less than 3% of users worldwide. Digi-Sign's Root CAs are comparable with those of other major vendors.




• Mozilla, at circa 10% of the world market, contains comparable Root CAs from Digi-Sign to those of other major CA vendors.

In summary, a detailed report on the interim findings from the investigation was neither required nor warranted.

IE4.0 or Netscape 3.x+ browsers are seven years old and few, if any, vendors support this ageing technology. As a security company, Digi-Sign tries to promote safe computing and internet usage in its security awareness initiatives. Encouraging users toward a more current and secure browser forms part of these initiatives.

EV SSL Memo

Availability of Fully Functional EV SSL

On behalf of the Board of Digi-Sign, The Certificate Corporation [Digi-Sign], the following General Release Document is being published as a direct reaction to recent 'information' regarding the availability of High Assurance / Extended Validation [EV] Secure Socket Layer [SSL] Certificates. This document states clearly and unequivocally, that as of this date, it is impossible for any organisation to confirm when EV SSLs will be available.

The Certificate Authority Forum, founded by the Comodo Group in 2005 has many IT industry leaders as Forum Subscribers (Microsoft, VeriSign, etc). By association, Digi-Sign is a member and contributor to this forum and can quote directly from the Chairman of the Forum who states,

"...technically, EV SSLs can be issued now, but the whole purpose of EV SSLs is not to address technical issues but validation and authentication".

So technically, Digi-Sign can issue EV SSLs today but until the Forum comes to a formal decision, the important Validations issue remains unresolved.

Any organisation that is claiming they have the ability to issue EV SSLs and/or are committing to delivery dates can only be doing so to mislead the market for commercial gain. This practice is reprehensible and this type of practice will be raised at the Forum meeting with a view to expelling the party(s) responsible or severely penalising them. This has the affect of undermining the industry that is attempting to harmonise security for the common good and Digi-Sign holds in contempt any such organisation that would thwart this initiative for short tem gains.

The Board is resolute in dealing with perpetrators of these types of 'guerilla sales' tactics and would ask the public at large to act responsibly and report any such incidences using our Complaints Form [35].

SGC Statement

Server Gated Cryptography Myths

Frequently, we are questioned about Server Gated Cryptography [SGC] and why VeriSign® is offering this 'valuable' function with its SSL certificates (although more companies have 'jumped on the bandwagon' lately).

Statements like:

VeriSign is the only major CA that offers a certificate that will always encrypt at 128-bit encryption and/or that Digi-Sign's certificates are dependent upon 2 things to ensure a 128-bit session:


1. the browser must be recent enough to handle 128-bit encryption

and

2. all Windows 2000 machines must have been shipped with or have downloaded Microsoft's Service Pack 2

These statements are designed to confuse and are misleading

To clarify this, the following formal statement has been prepared:

The first confirmation I would like to make is that our Digi-SSL™ Certificates are true so called 128-bit certificates, which you may simply confirm by connecting to any of our secure sites, i.e.: https://www.digi-sign.com [36]

Before we can make any comments on VeriSign statements to the contrary, allow me to give you some background on the Server Gated Cryptography terminology, that VeriSign refers too.

Server Gated Cryptography (implemented by Microsoft), or other name for it would be: International Step-Up (implemented by Netscape) is (was) nothing more than a workaround for an out of date US Government Policy from 1995. This policy was stated that for national security and safety reasons, a maximum of 40-bit level encryption only can be used with home and corporate hardware and software for non-US customers.

Although almost all versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator/Communicator were technically capable of supporting 128-bit encryption, the US Government, by releasing this policy, forced two major US development companies: Microsoft and Netscape (and actually all US development companies) to disable this facility and restrict the connections from outside US to maximum encryption level of 40-bit.

At that time, banking online and internet access to financial resources started to become more and more common in many countries, not only in US, which led the major international banks to a conclusion: secure access to their banks and financial resources actually requires more than just a 40-bit level encryption.

To meet their expectations and at the same time not to violate the US Government Policy, Microsoft and Netscape in combination with VeriSign (and other PKI vendors) introduced something, which is now so called Server Gated Cryptography or International Step-Up.

As per the US Government restriction, 128-bit SSL certificates supporting the Server Gated Cryptography could only be issued to trusted organisations and outside US, this meant only to banks or financial institutions. Before the Certification Authority (such as VeriSign), could issue such a certificate to a non-US company, it had to further validate the customer to establish if it is a banking company or a financial institution.

Therefore, initially, not every company in the world, or even in the US could get a Server Gated Cryptography enabled SSL certificate to fully support 128-bit encryption.

The way the Server Gated Cryptography works is very simple:

Certification Authority (such as VeriSign) adds two extensions to their certificate key usage:

1.3.6.1.4.1.311.10.3.3 ( 'Microsoft SGC' )
2.16.840.1.113730.4.1 ( 'Netscape SGC' )

and issues a Server Gated Cryptography enabled certificate to a validated company

• Once you connect via SSL to a server that has a Server Gated Cryptography (enabled) certificate installed, the initial browser connection is always done using 40-bit level encryption.
• During the 'handshake', the browser downloads the server certificate and checks if it was issued by a Trusted Certification Authority
• Once the browser is happy, that the server certificate is trusted, it checks if the certificate has the Server Gated Cryptography extension
• If it does, then the browser immediately renegotiates the session values, by re-establishing the connection with the server using 128-bit encryption

This is the whole 'trick' behind the Server Gated Cryptography.

Before the US Government removed the encryption level restriction policy, many European companies developed workaround tools and so called patches for this problem to allow their browsers to work with full 128-bit encryption.

On January 15, 2000 the US Government relaxed export restrictions on the worldwide shipment of strong encryption (defined as 128-bit support). Once this happened, Microsoft and Netscape released so called 'encryption upgrades' that did nothing more than remove the 40-bit encryption restriction from their systems.

Today, the current standard encryption level for all home and corporate software/hardware is 128-bit, therefore each user supporting 128-bit encryption may connect to a site secured with our Digi-SSL™ certificate using a 128-bit session.

Digi-Sign sees no need in the current market that would lead us to enable the Server Gated Cryptography extension in our certificates. The percentage of users using old IE 5.0, or Netscape 4.x browsers with 40-bit capabilities is so small, that it is currently less than 1%. In addition to this, Microsoft no longer supports products such as Windows 95, IE 4.0, IE 5.0 and in the same way Netscape is not supporting their Communicator 4.x software.

The ongoing development of new products, browsers versions, plug-ins, additions etc. is currently forcing the outstanding percentage of users to update their browsers, which will automatically enable their browsers/systems with 128-bit encryption level.

• Digi-Sign certificates are not dependent on any end user specification. At the moment, it is basically the end user's browser that decides what encryption level to choose




• statements like 'a browser needs to be recent enough to support the 128-bit encryption' are misleading. Microsoft IE 5.5 and Netscape from 4.7 support the 128-bit encryption by default. They are now 4 years old too!




• It is true, that a Windows 2000 machine need an encryption pack update or service pack 2 to support 128-bit encryption. The first releases of Windows 2000 were capable of only 40-bit encryption (due to US restriction). Once the restriction was removed by the US Government, in January 2000, Microsoft supplied an encryption update pack to enable this system to support 128-bit encryption and finally service pack 2 was released that contained the encryption update pack. Again this is more than 4 years ago!

Later releases of Windows 2000 system were enabled with 128-bit encryption by default. Market research confirms that almost none of the users accessing the Internet at the moment, have a Windows 2000 based systems with a service pack lower than 2. In short, they support 128-bit encryption.

I hope I provided enough information to support our position and that I have convinced you that 40-bit encryption is just a restriction in the browser. Server Gated Cryptography is just a workaround for it, which is not needed any more, and that the current browser and OS system usage market research clearly shows that almost all of internet users, use 128-bit compatible browsers/systems. By default!

Przemek Michalski
Technical Advisor