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Measurement and Analysis of Private Key Sharing in the HTTPS Ecosystem

Authors:

Frank Cangialosi,

Taejoong Chung,

David Choffnes,

Bruce M. Maggs,

Christo WilsonAuthors Info & Claims

CCS '16: Proceedings of the 2016 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security

Pages 628 - 640

https://doi.org/10.1145/2976749.2978301

Published: 24 October 2016 Publication History

Abstract

The semantics of online authentication in the web are rather straightforward: if Alice has a certificate binding Bob's name to a public key, and if a remote entity can prove knowledge of Bob's private key, then (barring key compromise) that remote entity must be Bob. However, in reality, many websites' and the majority of the most popular ones-are hosted at least in part by third parties such as Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) or web hosting providers. Put simply: administrators of websites who deal with (extremely) sensitive user data are giving their private keys to third parties. Importantly, this sharing of keys is undetectable by most users, and widely unknown even among researchers. In this paper, we perform a large-scale measurement study of key sharing in today's web. We analyze the prevalence with which websites trust third-party hosting providers with their secret keys, as well as the impact that this trust has on responsible key management practices, such as revocation. Our results reveal that key sharing is extremely common, with a small handful of hosting providers having keys from the majority of the most popular websites. We also find that hosting providers often manage their customers' keys, and that they tend to react more slowly yet more thoroughly to compromised or potentially compromised keys.

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Cited By

Dong HZhang YLee HDu KTu GSun YVallina-Rodríguez NSuarez-Tángil GLevin DPelsser C(2024)Mutual TLS in Practice: A Deep Dive into Certificate Configurations and Privacy IssuesProceedings of the 2024 ACM on Internet Measurement Conference10.1145/3646547.3688415(214-229)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3646547.3688415
Tehrani POsterweil ESchmidt TWählisch M(2024)A Security Model for Web-Based CommunicationCommunications of the ACM10.1145/362329267:10(83-90)Online publication date: 26-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3623292
Zineddine AChakir OSadqi YMaleh YSingh Gaba GGurtov ADev K(2024)A systematic review of cybersecurity assessment methods for HTTPSComputers and Electrical Engineering10.1016/j.compeleceng.2024.109137115:COnline publication date: 1-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.compeleceng.2024.109137
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Measurement and Analysis of Private Key Sharing in the HTTPS Ecosystem
1. Networks
  1. Network performance evaluation
    1. Network measurement
  2. Network properties
    1. Network security
      1. Web protocol security
2. Security and privacy
  1. Cryptography
    1. Key management
  2. Human and societal aspects of security and privacy
    1. Economics of security and privacy

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CCS '16: Proceedings of the 2016 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security

October 2016

1924 pages

ISBN:9781450341394

DOI:10.1145/2976749

General Chairs:
Edgar Weippl
SBA Research, Austria
,
Stefan Katzenbeisser
TU Darmstadt, CYSEC, Germany
,
Program Chairs:
Christopher Kruegel
University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
,
Andrew Myers
Cornell University, USA
,
Shai Halevi
IBM Research, USA

Copyright © 2016 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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SIGSAC: ACM Special Interest Group on Security, Audit, and Control

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 24 October 2016

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National Science Foundation

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CCS'16

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SIGSAC

CCS'16: 2016 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security

October 24 - 28, 2016

Vienna, Austria

Acceptance Rates

CCS '16 Paper Acceptance Rate 137 of 831 submissions, 16%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,261 of 6,999 submissions, 18%

Upcoming Conference

CCS '25

Sponsor:
sigsac

ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security

October 13 - 17, 2025

Taipei , Taiwan

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Cited By

Dong HZhang YLee HDu KTu GSun YVallina-Rodríguez NSuarez-Tángil GLevin DPelsser C(2024)Mutual TLS in Practice: A Deep Dive into Certificate Configurations and Privacy IssuesProceedings of the 2024 ACM on Internet Measurement Conference10.1145/3646547.3688415(214-229)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3646547.3688415
Tehrani POsterweil ESchmidt TWählisch M(2024)A Security Model for Web-Based CommunicationCommunications of the ACM10.1145/362329267:10(83-90)Online publication date: 26-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3623292
Zineddine AChakir OSadqi YMaleh YSingh Gaba GGurtov ADev K(2024)A systematic review of cybersecurity assessment methods for HTTPSComputers and Electrical Engineering10.1016/j.compeleceng.2024.109137115:COnline publication date: 1-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.compeleceng.2024.109137
Yoon DChung TKim Y(2023)Delegation of TLS Authentication to CDNs using Revocable Delegated CredentialsProceedings of the 39th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference10.1145/3627106.3627144(113-123)Online publication date: 4-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3627106.3627144
Dong HShu HPrakash VZhang YParacha MChoffnes DTorres-Arias SHuang DSun YMontpetit MLeivadeas AUhlig SJaved M(2023)Behind the Scenes: Uncovering TLS and Server Certificate Practice of IoT Device Vendors in the WildProceedings of the 2023 ACM on Internet Measurement Conference10.1145/3618257.3624815(457-477)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3618257.3624815
Papadogiannakis EPapadopoulos PP. Markatos EKourtellis N(2023)Who Funds Misinformation? A Systematic Analysis of the Ad-related Profit Routines of Fake News SitesProceedings of the ACM Web Conference 202310.1145/3543507.3583443(2765-2776)Online publication date: 30-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3543507.3583443
Shobiri BMannan MYoussef A(2023)CDNs’ Dark Side: Security Problems in CDN-to-Origin ConnectionsDigital Threats: Research and Practice10.1145/34994284:1(1-22)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3499428
Han JYun IKim SKim TSon SHan D(2023)Scalable and Secure Virtualization of HSM With ScaleTrustIEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking10.1109/TNET.2022.322042731:4(1595-1610)Online publication date: Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TNET.2022.3220427
Farhan SChung T(2023)Exploring the Evolution of TLS CertificatesPassive and Active Measurement10.1007/978-3-031-28486-1_4(71-84)Online publication date: 21-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-031-28486-1_4
Xin RLin SYang X(2023)Quantifying User Password Exposure to Third-Party CDNsPassive and Active Measurement10.1007/978-3-031-28486-1_27(652-668)Online publication date: 21-Mar-2023
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