Certificate Transparency (CT) is a security feature designed to call for greater transparency in regard to SSL/TLS certificates. The entire vision of CT — which is if you publish information about every certificate you issue, we can detect and act against potential threats — makes sense, as it is more transparent.
How Does CT Work?
Certificate logs — Certificate Authorities (CA) must log information about the certificates they issue to publicly auditable logs.
Log Monitoring: These logs can be monitored by security researchers and the public at large to identify and report on abnormal or bogus certificates.
Certificate Revocation: If a certificate is compromised, it can be revoked and revocation information is published to the logs.
Advantages of Certificate Transparency
Stronger Security: CT prevents malicious third parties from issuing fraudulent certificates and conducting man-in-the-middle attacks.
Higher Trust: CT creates trust with users and websites by providing a level of transparency around the certificate issuing process.
Pre-emptive Reporting on Threats: Security researchers can catch logs and examine them to report threats in advance to avoid major damage.
Better Certificate Management: CT can assist organizations with their certificate lifecycle.
Certificate Transparency with a Catch
In order to deploy CT, organizations must partner with a CA that enables CT and set up their web servers to use CT-compatible certificates. Also check logs to see if their certificates are being correctly published or not.
Conclusions & Certificate Transparency going forward
Proof-of-Concept: CT, as a powerful tool of making the internet more secure. CT will continue to evolve alongside the changing threat landscape and undoubtedly also play a growing role in the protection of users online. CT, how it develops in the future may involve the following:
Additional Log Monitoring: More log monitoring has been mandated in order to identify and react to potential threats.
Improved Integration of Browser Security Features: Better integration of CT with browser security features for safer browsing.
