DigiNotar B.V., a unit of VASCO Data Security International, Inc., is an Internet Trust Service Provider based in the Netherlands. Part of their business involves issuing digital certificates.

On the Noisebridge hacker mailing list, security specialist Jacob Appelbaum has published an SSL certificate and pertinent private key that together allow web servers to avoid triggering an alert in vulnerable browsers - irrespective of the domain for which the certificate is submitted.

Unethical business practices of an SSL Certificate reseller have been exposed and it is causing many to wonder about the security and practices of SSL providers.

"I recently made a blog post complaining about the behavior in Firefox 3 [...] After that post got Slashdotted, I got an email from Giuseppe Scrivano saying that he was interested in implementing better certificate behavior in IceCat. The question is this: What is the optimal certificate handling behavior for a web browser? ..."

In a startling revelation, the open-source Mozilla project says that its flagship Firefox browser contains a root certificate authority that doesn’t seem to have a known owner.

When you visit a Secure website in Firefox chances are that the FavIcon for the website is replaced with a Green bar with the details of the company. This is because of the default properties in Firefox to display detailed information of the website from the Extended Validation Certificate on the website.

The self-signed certificate is a certificate that you can create yourself that will provide SSL encryption but without the verification of your website from an outside source. The outside verification does cost money. In other words, you can get the protection you need, encryption by doing it yourself.

"Some websites need to handle data securely and assure the end-user they are a) secure and b) who they say they are. The traditional way to achieve these is via Secure Socket Layer. Firefox 3 changed what happens when a self-signed SSL certificate is encountered. It’s a change which has caused some concern and much discussion.

The German government has issued a stern warning to telling them not to use Firefox because the browser contains a critical security vulnerability.