alt Hacker News“They can put SCTs in the cert, and still not publish to the logs, nobody is auditing the logs for every cert every browser sees”
I don’t think you can get the SCT from a log without the log publishing it? That would defeat the purpose.
“Certificates that support certificate transparency must include one or more signed certificate timestamps (SCTs), which is a promise from a log operator to include the certificate in their log within a maximum merge delay (MMD).[4][3] At some point within the maximum merge delay, the log operator adds the certificate to their log.”
> I don’t think you can get the SCT from a log without the log publishing it?
Well you can, but only if the log cooperates.
That is, the SCT is merely a promise to add the certificate to the log by some particular deadline. Nothing technically stops the log from disregarding that promise. But if it does fail to log the certificate, the SCT itself is proof of its misbehavior.
And it's not enough to subvert a single log, because browsers require SCTs from multiple distinct operators in order to consider a certificate valid.