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security - Switch the SSL provider after Heartbleed bug instead of revoking

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I have a question regarding the
Heartbleed problem and the SSL certificates. About Heartbleed many people say that
admins should revoke their certificates and get new ones. I got my SSL certs from
Startcom and as you may know they charge for revoking. I am very angry about that but
know my question(s): - Is it possible to just switch from Startcom to another provider
like Comodo, get new certs and change the certs on my server? - Could be there any
problems with the old certs if they are not being revoked? - Is it possible to "block"
these old certs on my server (Ubuntu 12.04)?



I
don't think that my certs have been compromised but this is a serious topic for
me.



Answer






I
got my SSL certs from Startcom and as you may know they charge for revoking. I am very
angry about that
...




What would you
prefer they do -- revoke hundreds of thousands of certificates? That would produce a
certificate revocation list that some portable devices wouldn't even be able to fit in
their memory. And then every time they updated their CRL, every device, even those on
low bandwidth networks, would have to re-download a massive list. It's just not
practical.




Is it
possible to just switch from Startcom to another provider like Comodo, get new certs and
change the certs on my
server?





Sure,
but how would that help? An attacker could still impersonate your server by using the
old certs.




Could
be there any problems with the old certs if they are not being
revoked?




Yes, an
attacker could use them to impersonate your
server.




Is it
possible to "block" these old certs on my server (Ubuntu
12.04)?





How
would that help? The attacker wouldn't pass any traffic to your server but would instead
interpose themselves.



The upshot of all this is
that your security is compromised and there's basically nothing you can do about it.
(Though it's a pretty minor compromise because it can only be exploited by an active
attacker with at least some control over the network used to access your server. Also,
you may have more serious compromises due to heartbleed, and many of those you can and
should do something about.)


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