Free SSL certs

[Brian Karas]

On Wed, 2003-04-23 at 20:28, Michael O'Donnell wrote:
> I think I heard that the primary advantage the Big Name
> CA's have is that they got grandfathered in such that
> they're in the short list of those that the various
> browsers (IE Explorer, NetScape, etc) are preconfigured
> at build time to recognize by default.  As you indicate,
> there's otherwise nothing magic or sacred about them.
> 

Well, I don't believe they are "grandfathered in", I believe it's more
like they essentially lobby to be included in the pre-installed list.  

As it is Mozilla came with 2 dozen pre-installed CA's, I'm not sure if
that qualifies as "short list" in the scheme of things.  I have built-in
CA's from AOL, Visa, GTE, and a few companies I've never heard of...

> Heck, when you consider that (for example) VeriSign owns
> (or is) Network Solutions (who don't exactly have a stellar
> reputation for fair dealings or even basic competence)
> the whole notion of "trusted" gets even shakier...

Amen!
-- 
Brian Karas <brian at karas.net>