CertificateTransparency

They could also get an evil CT log to issue a SCT without logging it… If a SCT is issued, it has to be logged within a certain amout of time; 3rd party auditors check for this. [1]: An auditor is a third party that keeps log operators honest. They query logs from various vantage points on the internet and gossip with each other about what order certificates are in. They’re like the paparazzi of the PKI. They also keep track of whether an SCT has been honored or not by measuring the time it took between the SCT’s timestamp and the corresponding certificate showing up in the log. And only certain logs are trusted anyway [2]; a CT log that doesn't meet certain requirements wouldn't be trusted to begin with. And if a trusted CT log turned evil, it would quickly be noticed. [1]: https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-certificate-transpar... [

When certificates are submitted to CT logs, they are given Signed Certificate Timestamp by the log, which can be attached to the certificate. Chrome and other major browsers require that every certificate has them attached and signed by a trusted log operator, guaranteeing that each certificate is submitted to a CT log. https://github.com/chromium/ct-policy/blob/master/ct_policy....

That paper is from April 2010 which is a different age in terms of internet encryption. Just for comparison, Google only started offering an encrypted version of its service in May 2010: https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/search-more-securely... They quickly realized the problems that you describe. In Nov 2011, the Certificate Transparency project by Google had its initial commit: https://github.com/google/certificate-transparency/commit/6a... In Chrome they have since enforced CT compliance for certificates: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!msg/ct-poli... CT requires that each certificate issued needs to be contained in both a Google log and a non-Google log: https://github.com/chromium/ct-policy/blob/master/ct_policy.... This means that fradulently issued certificates either won't work, or will be contained in publi