Globalsign finds no PKI compromise

SSL SECURITY VENDOR Globalsign, the world's fifth largest digital certificate authority (CA), has announced that did not identify any security breach of its public key infrastructure during a recent audit.

Meanwhile, Apple released a Mac OS X update to revoke trust in the CA called Diginotar.

Globalsign launched an internal investigation after an Iranian hacker who broke into Comodo, Startcom and more recently Diginotar claimed to have compromised its systems.

The hacker announced last week that Globalsign is one of four CAs to which he has gained unauthorized access. He has not named the other three yet.

In addition to launching an investigation, Globalsign immediately suspended its certificate issuing business, earning praise from security experts for the quick response.

"I suspect that many companies wouldn't have turned off part of their business voluntarily, and called in outside help, to investigate allegations of the sort made by ComodoHacker," said Paul Ducklin, Sophos' head of technology for Asia-Pacific.

Globalsign also contracted Fox-IT, the security consultancy firm that investigated Diginotar, to audit its network. Last Friday, the company announced that even though it identified an intrusion into its web server, nothing else was compromised.

"At present there is no further evidence of breach other than the isolated www web server. As an additional precaution, we continue to monitor all activity to all services closely. The investigation and high threat approach to returning services to normal continues," Globalsign said.

The company had said it expected to restore some of its services today, but it announced further delays over the weekend. It does not expect customers to be able to process orders until Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Apple issued a security update to remove the Diginotar root certificates from Mac OS X. The hardware maker has been criticized for failing to respond to the Diginotar incident in a timely manner, while its competitors like Microsoft and Google acted immediately to protect their users. µ