Securing Certificate Issuance using Multipath Domain Control Validation


This blog post is part of Crypto Week 2019.
Trust on the Internet is underpinned by the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). PKI grants servers the ability to securely serve websites by issuing digital certificates, providing the foundation for encrypted and authentic communication.
Certificates make HTTPS encryption possible by using the public key in the certificate to verify server identity. HTTPS is especially important for websites that transmit sensitive data, such as banking credentials or private messages. Thankfully, modern browsers, such as Google Chrome, flag websites not secured using HTTPS by marking them “Not secure,” allowing users to be more security conscious of the websites they visit.
This blog post introduces a new, free tool Cloudflare offers to CAs so they can further secure certificate issuance. But before we dive in too deep, let’s talk about where certificates come from.
Certificate Authorities
Certificate Authorities (CAs) are the institutions responsible for issuing certificates.
When issuing a certificate for any given domain, they use Domain Control Validation (DCV) to verify that the entity requesting a certificate for the domain is the legitimate owner of the domain. With DCV the domain owner:
- creates a DNS resource record for a domain;
- uploads a document to Continue reading
