Root Causes 343: The EIDAS 2.0 Controversy

Hosted by

Tim Callan

Chief Compliance Officer

Jason Soroko

Fellow

Original broadcast date

November 22, 2023

ETSI is preparing to release specifications for eIDAS 2.0. One controversial aspect of this new standard is that it limits browsers' ability to determine their own trusted roots. In this episode we explain this limitation and the concerns surrounding it.

Podcast Transcript

Lightly edited for flow and brevity.

Tim CallanThere is a topic that is very much in the dialogue right now in the world of public certificates and it’s a very controversial topic and it is eIDAS 2.0.

e-I-D-A-S. That is an acronym and if I try to do it, I’m gonna mangle it so I’m probably not going to try. The e stands for electronic. But it is the EU, the European Union mandated digital certificate and digital identity ecosystem that is there to provide a variety of functions all of which at a high level are about connecting entities, citizens and businesses and government entities to each other in a reliable, irreputable way for electronic transactions. And eIDAS itself has been around for quite some time. Most of a decade. And now we are moving into the realm of eIDAS 2.0 which is very close to being complete and we should expect to appear full standards to appear next year.

Jason SorokoTim, there’s a lot there. I mean we’ve had podcasts on eIDAS in the past and it’s very important to note that eIDAS in itself - a lot of people will ask well what is it? It’s actually a lot of things.

And it’s not just QWAC certificates or certain kinds of other identity certificates for document signing. It’s also an entire legal platform as well.

It’s a set of laws so that the ability to actually do legal transactions with these kinds of signed documents signed by eIDAS certificates, the ability to do that legally is also all part of eIDAS, which in fact stands for by the way, electronic identification authentication and trust services.

Tim CallanI probably could have figured that out.

Jason SorokoIt’s a little bit of an odd acronym because all the words don’t really fit into the actual letters. But on the other hand, it’s a lot of things. So, if you are confused by eIDAS, don’t worry. A lot of people are in terms of its bigger picture but it’s a lot of things including certificates and the laws behind them.

Tim CallanAnd eIDAS 2.0 specifies that there will be a digital wallet by way of example and how that wallet will be used and how people will have to take that wallet and things along those lines. So, yes; there’s a lot there. And where the real controversy that’s emerged, at least within my purview has come up is about server certificates. What you call the “quack”, QWAC, is basically a server certificate. It’s the equivalent of an SSL certificate. In fact, browsers treat it exactly the same way that they treat an SSL certificate from a functionality perspective. That wasn’t really considered that big of a deal but eIDAS 2.0 has a particular stipulation in it that is in the most recent draft and I’m pretty confident will be in the final version in one form or another that has a few people very upset and then there’s also some concern about the process and how it came about. Those are probably both things that we should unpack today.

Jason SorokoThese are important topics, Tim. In terms of, you know, we are gonna call it controversy.

I think we both agree we just want to understand it rather than give a lot of our own opinion perhaps at this point but let’s at least really help everybody here to understand exactly what’s going on.

Framing the debate is probably a full podcast so why don’t we do that and then maybe we will try to return to this and we’ll talk about - - wax eloquent on our own thoughts on this a little. So, there is a thing in eIDAS they call a trust service provider or a TSP. I will say TSP from here on out. A TSP is the equivalent of what in my world we would call a public CA. It’s somebody who is able ultimately to issue certificates under the eIDAS rules and guidelines and those certificates are going to be honored by the software in the ecosystem that consumes certificates – the certificate consumers. If we want to use the CA/Browser Forum nomenclature. But, there are maybe 100 public CAs in the major browser root store programs and maybe 50 public CAs that are members of CA/Browser Forum. There are hundreds of TSPs and they are very fragmented and they are all over the place and most of the TSPs are country specific. So, you will literally get a TSP and they will just operate in Lithuania or they will just operate in Spain or they’ll just operate in Turkey or they’ll just operate in Germany. And if you think about it, it’s not really necessarily surprising because these are people who are creating certificates to be used within government mandated systems within each individual nation and so their market is local, their knowledge is local, the rules for them to validate is local. Everything is local. So you’ve got this large populous of a large number of TSPs and the TSPs can be qualified for different things. So maybe a TSP could only be qualified for doc signing and they can only give you doc signing certs. Or maybe a TSP could only be qualified for email signing and they could only give you email signing certs. Or, a TSP could be qualified for – drum roll please – a QWAC, which you said before. That’s a server certificate. So there are TSPs that are qualified to serve up QWACs. And this is the key point. Because the new eIDAS 2.0 rules have a new specification that isn’t in eIDAS 1.0 which states that browser consuming software – whatever that is – browsers must accept QWACs from any approved TSP. So think about that for a second. Browsers going all the back to 1995 have decided which roots they trust and which roots they don’t. This is a storied tradition for nearly 30 years. Now, the European Union, the European Parliament is going to pass a law saying that inside of the EU software needs to obey its decisions about which public CAs are to be trusted for server certificates. So what do you think of that?

Jason SorokoCan I add to it?

Tim CallanPlease.

Jason SorokoThis kind of shows you how the sausage is made in these podcasts where Tim and I really want to have a true spontaneous conversation and this is, you know.-

Tim CallanWe did not compare notes.

Jason SorokoI just want to add to this Tim which is tell me whether or not Tim you are aware or this really to me adds to the framing that you just made which comes down to who runs the trust store.

Tim CallanYes.

Jason SorokoWho runs the trust store because usually it has been the browsers and what the EU is doing is saying, yeah, great browsers. We are glad that that was part of your history but when it comes to our QWAC certs, we are gonna run your trust store. Ok. So let me take that perfect frame that you just made and add another controversy which to me is completely related to this, which is buried in Article 45.

Tim CallanArticle 45. That’s the one.

Jason SorokoeIDAS 2.0 regulations which, Tim, it goes beyond, it goes beyond defining the trust store. I’ll put it the way that the electronic frontier foundation put it in their blog post. So, blog post “Article 45 will roll back web security by 12 years”. Article by Jacob Hoffman Andrews dated November 7, 2023. I will read directly from this because it’s actually quite well written.

“Article 45 forbids browsers from enforcing modern security requirements on certain CAs without the approval of an EU member government.”

And so, if you think about, alright, well why would browsers want to have their own root stores? Because well, if there is something to be distrusted well they can kick out one of the currently trusted public keys in their trust store and end that being trusted essentially. And there could be any number of reasons for that to happen. Real good, true, legitimate reasons.

But now what the EU is saying is, wow, um, even things like CT log keeping might not be allowed by the EU and maximum, they will have the right to declare the maximum bit length of the key, for the private keys.

So, in other words, everything you and I talk about on this podcast, Tim, which is about what makes up a good strong certificate and what’s always the worry about the lowest bar. Which that bar should always be raised and we know that quantum is gonna raise the bar a lot. To the point where we gotta swap out cryptographic algorithms. What this seems to look like – and I think this is where the controversy is and maybe you can reframe this better for me, Tim, but if you combine, if you combine what you said saying the EU government is in control of who is in the root store and they also get to determine the maximum bar on which the security definition of the certificates are set, then you’ve got a recipe for the EU basically has set up a system where, hey, if the EU wanted to spy on somebody…

Tim CallanYeah.

Jason SorokoI mean there’s the elephant in the room.

Tim CallanThere’s so much to unpack here. Let’s go with that one first.

Gee, has anybody encountered an example of a government attempting to abuse the technology in order to keep an eye on people’s supposedly secret and encrypted communications? How about all of them? I mean even the ones that are supposed to be the bastions of freedom and privacy and open communication, like the U.S. and U.K. and Australia. These guys are doing it. Let alone Turkey.

Number one, very frightening in that regard. And again, this law is that a government can just clarify, declare these are the QWAC TSPs. Too bad.

So there is a process specified in the latest draft whereby a browser can basically petition for removal of a TSP. But the browser can’t unilaterally remove it. They have to petition. What if they don’t get it? And so, we’ve seen a number of deprecations in recent years that we saw Certinomis and we saw obviously TrustCore and the Spanish one that my brain won’t say the word. You know the one I mean. And in all of these cases or at least in most of these cases, certainly there was a competence argument that was made. These guys aren’t competent to run a CA. But also, there was an integrity argument to be made. We don’t believe that these guys are on the up and up. We don’t believe these guys are being purely transparent. So when you start to worry about a government’s hand-chosen pet CA being forced to be in the trusted list and when you look at the fact that most of the deprecations that have occurred in living memory at least had an element of questioning the CA’s transparency and integrity that adds to the level of concern that we have. To the point where we could ask the question hypothetically if one of these deprecations like Certinomis was taking place a year from now or two years from now or whenever eIDAS 2.0 is in effect, it’s like two years from now hypothetically, would that deprecation actually be able to occur? What if the answer is no?

Jason SorokoAnd what if the government gives no answer as to why?

Tim CallanAnd then that gets into the next thing which is there is a lot of concern about lack of transparency. And I’ve had this debate. I just had this debate with a colleague very recently who pointed out all of the ways that the browser root stores and the CA/Browser Forum are imperfect when it comes to transparency. I’ll accept that. I’m a member of it. We’re imperfect. But we are trying real hard to be really transparent. We all are. Dialogue takes place on public lists and face-to-face meetings have Minutes and those Minutes are posted publicly there is just a great deal of effort is put into making all of this visible because this is the web PKI. It belongs to all of humanity, and we feel that all of humanity needs to be able to see what’s going on. Now you compare that to the eIDAS process where a series of bureaucrats and legislatures go into closed rooms and make deals and bargains and nobody has visibility on it and then once a while they kick out a draft. And I mean every few months and then they go back into the deals and bargains and nobody has visibility on it. And that has a lot of people really concerned especially when you combine it with your first point about what about pet CAs and what about governments having an unhealthy level of control over this crypto.

Jason SorokoYeah. You got it, Tim. This is a recipe for something that’s not good.

I said the words before. I’ll just leave it there. Look, questioning people’s motivations is one thing. You said it best when you said, look, it seems to be overall that governments want to control the internet, control encryption, etc. This is one way definitely that they could be doing bad. To me though, just as a security practitioner – and the real spirit of this podcast is to ask maybe the other question here, Tim, which is there any good reason at all why you set a high bar on security and not a low bar? And I just can’t figure it out at this point the way that this Article 45 seems to be written.

Tim CallanI think that’s well said, Jay. And there seems to be a number, in general, there seems to be a stronger desire to exercise control over the browser software than we’ve seen in the past and another good example of that is that as part of a QWAC - - a QWAC of course is kind of the eIDAS equivalent of an OV or EV certificate. It’s an org validated certificate. And as part of the new eIDAS 2.0 rules, one of the specifications is that the browsers will display organization information in a consumer friendly way. Now specifically what that is isn’t really defined which also makes people nervous, but now what they are doing is they are moving into the realm of dictating how the browsers should create their interfaces.

So all of this then gets into a theme that you and talk about a lot which is government versus the internet or government versus crypto or government versus tech. And once again, we are seeing government versus the internet is happening again.

Jason SorokoIt’s happening, Tim. This is that. I cannot see this as being anything other than that.

Tim CallanAbsolutely. Let’s focus more back onto the trust store thing. Although all of these parts where the governments want to dictate how software manufacturers make their software and what they decide their software is going to do is at the end of the day who do you believe is better set to evaluate the overall health of the web PKI or the suitability of a user interface convention for an ordinary consumer or the suitability of a single CA to be allowed to issue certificates that this software is ultimately going to trust? Do you think that Apple is better at that or do you think that Belgium is better at that? I’m going with Apple.

Jason SorokoI tell you though, you talk to especially people over in Europe and absolutely people who are involved with the EU and they just are absolutely at war with the U.S., the big U.S. tech companies. I mean we could have a whole podcast, an interesting one about how eIDAS 2.0, the entire reasoning for the EU coming up with its own wallet standard, right, is to basically head off the inevitability of big U.S. tech companies. Apple absolutely being one of them of having a wallet that could dominate everything and my goodness the Europeans would be afraid of that. There is a lot of that kind of thing that actually makes sense. Even some of the European privacy laws actually make sense. There’s good stuff in a lot what the EU is doing and has been doing. Even within eIDAS 2.0 there’s a ton of good stuff but this Article 45 business is just - come on guys.

Tim CallanThat’s absolutely right Jason. You have to wonder – and this has also been brought up by plenty of people – if Apple and Google were companies that originally had been created on European soil and were headquartered over there would this be going on?

Jason SorokoNo.

Tim CallanAnd how much of this is European governments feeling that technology is forcing them to cede control over their own lands and their own people and there own way of life to foreign companies and how much of this is their toolkit for what they - - or what they perceive to be their toolkit for combatting that and that’s all wrapped up in this too. Again, every time we talk about this that is definitely one of the aspects of government versus the internet for sure.

Jason SorokoOnce you start dictating a browser’s root store, once you start dictating how it can show the equivalent of OV/EV information, which is, God that’s a topic from, it’s got dinosaur dust on it right now. In terms of the old EV story. Goodness gracious, how in the world do the browsers compete with each other in a European setting?

Tim CallanThen, we are not even done. We are not even done. Now you’ve got the EU is doing this and they are going to use the power of fines to force technology companies to comply and why does it have to stop at the EU. What if Canada does that? What if Brazil does that? What if a hundred nations around the world do that? How are we gonna deal?

Jason SorokoI’m wondering right now if I should be even talking about this.

Tim CallanThat’s right. You are not Canadian enough Jay because I’m not Canadian. You are in trouble.

Jason SorokoIs this topic Canadian enough or I have I said words that have upset my government? I don’t know. Who knows. Maybe.

Tim CallanThen this also gets into the dialogue which is the, ok, look. Maybe everybody can deal with this. And it’s one thing, like GDPR is one thing. GDPR already has arguably made life really terrible for a lot of people because we always have to all to collect that damn accept cookies every time and how is that really making us more private but, in reality, how is that making me more secure that now I have an extra button click I have to do every time I go to a website. But at least GDPR is behavior based. But now all of the sudden we’ve got governments dictating how software is to be made. So, what happens tomorrow if name your favorite government outside the EU passes a law and they say actually you are not allowed to include the following list of TSPs and what is a TSP is on both lists? Then what? This is the problem that happens when legislatures, governments and bureaucrats and government people attempt to enforce their will over technology without understanding the practices that govern how technology is made. You get things like this.

Jason SorokoTim, we are making fogy browser. Get off my lawn.

Tim CallanFogy browser. We better not make fogy browser because we are gonna have to include the list of approved roots or we are gonna get in trouble.

Jason SorokoOh we encrypt nothing. We are just open.

Tim CallanThere you go.

Jason SorokoI say that only because it’s silly and some of this is. We cover a lot of government versus internet, government versus encryption stories. We do. It’s actually my least favorite subject. Not because it’s not intellectually stimulating or important news but it’s the one that makes my stomach sink the most. This a brutal one, Tim.

Tim CallanThis is a bad one. Unfortunately, we cover this topic too often.

Jason SorokoWe do.

Tim CallanThat’s the other thing. Because it happens a lot.

I do not believe that all of the dialogue from the EFF and many, many, many commentators and academics and industry people and the huge flood of people who have been speaking up against this, I do not believe that’s gonna have any impact whatsoever. I think that the EU has decided it’s going to do what’s it going to do and it doesn’t care and if anything, maybe it does care and maybe it likes the fact that the tech people are upset. That we are gonna have eIDAS 2.0 in a way that’s shaped very similar to the current draft and this is going to be a thing that everybody needs to deal with. But with that, we are taking a risk. We are taking a risk that any tiny apparently inconsequential CA can get itself listed as a European TSP and it must be included in all the major browsers and then if that CA is compromised or dishonest or anything that could happen from this tiny little European CA now they have unlocked the keys to the entire world.

Jason SorokoThat’s a spooky business, Tim.

Tim CallanThat’s something to be taken seriously.

Jason SorokoHey, look, thank you so much, Tim, for bringing it up on the podcast. I’m glad I was able to say my little piece. Look, the reason why we are bringing it up here is because yes there are some other people who are making noise about this. We didn’t want to make negative noise, we just wanted to make you guys aware because we want you to know - -

Tim CallanMaybe some of our opinions leaked out a little.

Jason SorokoThey might. They might have. But I’m already going to the gulag, Tim. You know that.

That’s right. You are in trouble either way. Very exciting and I do expect we are going to return to this topic. It’s a big dialogue right now and we just wanted to make sure that we put it out there in front of you.

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