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Comment by charleyablaze | Hacker News Reader

I agree there was a lot of mud slinging in that thread, but this is the key bit from Mozilla's response, supported by statements which Trustcor haven't disagreed with:

> Certificate Authorities have highly trusted roles in the internet ecosystem and it is unacceptable for a CA to be closely tied, through ownership and operation, to a company engaged in the distribution of malware. Trustcor’s responses via their Vice President of CA operations further substantiates the factual basis for Mozilla’s concerns.

It's not some other company, its the same owners and operators doing malware under one name and running a CA under another.

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> It's not some other company, its the same owners and operators doing malware under one name and running a CA under another.

Right! That’s insane.

Even if they’re innocent, which they may be, it’s too close of a connection: I can’t bet on a parent company remaining ethical when they’re in a position to decrypt all the traffic they handle.

CAs need to be trusted absolutely. Given the many well-documented instances of unethical corporate behavior, I won’t wait for specific evidence of malconduct. This isn’t criminal justice, this is risk assessment 101. A CA’s parent company owning a company that produces malware the relationship of these companies to present a significantly higher risk of abuse versus a CA who does not have a sister company developing malware. Even if they don’t deliberately manufacture malware, the sister company demonstrated to be operational incompetence that’s ripe for abuse.

Was that true? I believe that amounts to speculation by the security reserachers. Rachel said that at most there was shared incorporation services / early investment but that the CA has no legal relationship with other company doing malware. And any similarity of names on founding documents is purely speculation and furthermore no longer relevant since TrustCor executives hold all authority.

These are the references that Mozilla listed:

"[6] The identical corporate officers were acknowledged in Rachel McPherson’s initial response and confirmed in a company document submitted privately by Rachel to Mozilla.

[7] Ian Abramowitz is described as the CFO of TrustCor on their website and Rachel McPherson’s initial response notes “They are strictly passive investors, with the exception of Ian Abramowitz”. In a company document submitted privately by Rachel to Mozilla, Ian Abramowitz signs an agreement with TrustCor on behalf of both CHIVALRIC HOLDING COMPANY LLC and FRIGATE BAY HOLDINGS LLC."

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