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Comment on What is behind the current Lemmy meme about 4 being a private key?

Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

They are saying there were mistakes made with their key generation scripts:

We have done some preliminary assessment, there appears to be a flaw in the KGC script that was used on that specific day to create these ECC issuers. As for these ECC keys, our review of the KGC, assessment of the code and view of HSM keys so far indicate that a) a set of original ECC keys were created onboard as expected b) an approved deviation to our usual KGC to test a wrap/unwrap was introduced as these keys were meant for export for this instance c) a flaw in the code resulted in the second pair of keys being created onboard which were weaker d) these second pair of weaker keys were used by mistake to create the csr (because the key labels were similar) and signed by our root e) the CSR from these weaker keys were also sent over to Sectigo for cross signing (we verified the files sent over to Sectigo)

Source: bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2083449#c11

Personally I’m still a little confused why it makes any difference that the keys were intended for export to their European and US operations

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lamp@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
By “export” I think they mean export off of the hardware security module (HSM). Not export geographically.

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- Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I’m not so sure. Because shortly after the above quote they answered this to the next question:
  
  Is there any reason which may explain why the A and A-1 ECDSA keys appear to be unaffected by similar issues? The A and A-1 series were created in Entrust HSMs and were meant for deployment only in India.
  
  And previously in Comment 10 they said about the bad keys
  
  These ICAs were generated from the same key ceremony on Apr 30, 2025. The G3B and G3C ICAs were created for European and US operations respectively but they were not put into production except #2 in the list below but no end entity certificates were issued from these. The Code Signing issuers were not put into production also did not issue any certificates.
  
  That’s why I think somehow the intended place of use made a difference in their process. But it could be you’re right and they still mean HSM export, because the keys need to go to the region of use, and aren’t transported physically in the HSM.
  
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shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Interesting question! Google spit this out and it makes sense:

The primary reason these specific keys/issuers were created was to solve data sovereignty and data residency requirements for customers in those regions.

Many European and US corporate clients operate under strict legal frameworks (like GDPR in Europe or various federal compliance standards in the US) that legally dictate where cryptographic infrastructure can live, where data can be decrypted, and who can possess the root or intermediate private keys.

Generating separate regional keys is a compliance mechanism to guarantee that a customer’s data or handshake traffic stays within their jurisdiction.

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- lamp@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Google is wrong. There is no security benefit to using an SSL certificate signer in your jurisdiction because a hacked or malicious certificate authority in another jurisdiction can man-in-the-middle you or your customers just as effectively.
  
  Certificate authorities do not decrypt data or even transfer it on behalf of customers.
  
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  - shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It’s about compliance, not security.
    
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