But, if I read correctly, Rachel claimed that there was no longer any shared ownership and tried to explain that ownership in the sense that the word was being use was not a correct term in the first place. I believe she said it was a shared incorporation services / legal council / investor, at most, and that the speculation as to that relationship conferring any authority pertaining to the CA’s operations was entirely incorrect since the executive authority had long since been signed over to actual company officers.
I can't see Apple saying "Well, on advice of our lawyers we can't actually explain our corporate structure to you." Is it a secret that they have a corporate entity in Ireland, is it a secret what they do with it? Or is it public knowledge that they don't hide?
So I wouldn't describe secret ownership structures as a thing "most every company out there does." But I'm not going to say Apple doesn't do unethical things. (Also is Apple even a trusted root CA for mozilla or microsoft browsers?)
I think non-transparency is an even higher level of problem for a CA. Secrecy about your corporate structure does not seem okay for a CA -- we need to know who they are and who controls them, non-negotiably. Secrecy of corporate structure does not seem like a thing most every company (or every CA) out there does.
But it's quite possible Apple should _not_ be trusted to "run the entire mobile ecosystem" that uses Apple products. You can make that argument. And we can talk about what the heck any of us can do about it individually or collectively if so. That's a different question than who should be allowed as a trusted CA root, or who Mozilla or Microsoft should allow as a trusted CA root.
When you say "that underpins all of this in the first place", I'm not sure what you mean; Mozilla and Microsoft trusted CA roots effect people who aren't doing anything with Apple products, Apple does not in fact "underpin" the entire SSL CA system in the first place. I don't know what to do about the Apple ecosystem if Apple can't be trusted, but I support Mozilla, Microsoft, or anyone else removing trusted CA roots belonging to companies with secretive corporate structures, ownership, or governance. All of this can be true. Apple doing unethical things doesn't mean mozilla or microsoft should allow a trusted root CA with secretive corporate ownership structure.
Combining that with basic questions about how exactly ownership changed that were never answered and instead obfuscated behind reams of "nothing speak".
The final basis for the determination seems to be that the main loss of from distrusting the TrustCor CA was thier sibling company's private email service that is, at best, advertising itself under a very shady definition of E2EE.
Thus this seems like an easy decision to me.
The interesting conclusion that follows from that is that if you are going to operate a shady CA, it behooves you to find some large clients to make cost of revoking your trust higher.
...Which in essence means CA's probably shouldn't exist as a standalone thing, and everyone should learn to build their own trust networks. None of this vouch nonsense, or Trust theater.
She failed to reasonably and convincingly refute some allegations. There were repeated requests to provide information, some of which would be trivial to produce if acting in good faith.
After reading the exchange, I (as a reasonable bystander with no material interest in either side):
* Don't understand the relationship between TrustCor and the malware distributor in a clear way that company ownership records would provide
* Take it as a false statement that the mail service doesn't have apps, as its website advertises them
* Don't understand how their auditor audited them when they don't appear to have a presence in Canada that would be factual based on the extracts from the auditor findings
Unrelated to her responses, I could take in on faith that a rogue developer added spyware from a company with the same owners, but the finding that the payloads were send to TrustCor servers diminish the acceptance that sufficient controls exist in the company to not question the security of them as a CA.
TrustCor is a company that looks like a front for a Spyware maker, and when asked about that they say: "It's not like you think, but we don't want to tell you what the actual situation is, so you'll have to trust us, it's fine! Also the spyware we were caught distributing is totally not our fault, it's from a contractor in a completely different business unit and is totally independent from our CA business, but again we can't tell you more because it is secret. But trust us, the CA business is completely legit. And the sketchy things you found were all the idea of a guy who passed away recently, so we unfortunately can't ask him why he did it, but it's all legit don't worry trust us."
Playing devil's advocate: Why not? I mean yes, obviously if you end up in jail that might interfere with your ability to operate a CA (or any company for that matter). But barring that, as long as they haven't done anything to affect the security or proper operation of the CA certificate itself, why is that a basis for removing them from root stores? To the best of my knowledge this action is unprecedented.
We do that all the time. If, rather than TrustCor being associated with a company making malware we'd instead found out the company's CEO had cheated on his wife, would that be grounds for removing them from the root certificate store? Context matters.