alt Hacker NewsThe system where every CA gets to sign certificates for every possible domain makes no sense anymore. There are too many CAs and each one of them could compromise the whole system.
Why aren't SSL certificates tied to something like DNSSEC where a CA is responsible only for one tld? Since domain ownership is enough to get a certificate signed anyway, that wouldn't change security properties.
(1) Because it doesn't actually solve the problem. The registry operator for .COM is not historically trustworthy either.
(2) Because DNSSEC is a nightmare to deploy. Leaving the IANIX-type operational stuff aside, it doesn't work on all network paths; plenty of middleboxes freak out when they see DNS packets with DNSSEC records in them. People see this and want a best-effort system that uses DNSSEC in the majority cases where it does work, but now you have a downgradable, strippable security protocol.
(3) eMudhra is being murdered by the root programs as we speak, and when they're gone all we'll remember them for is as a WebPKI incident. The WebPKI itself will continue to function and nobody will care. That can't happen with .COM or .CO.UK or .IO; there's no accountability for those registry operators at all, let alone transparency logs to track what they're doing.