10.02 Lab 6: Certificates and TLS

Week 10 · 38 points · about 90 minutes · submit in Canvas

Goal

Lab 5 ended with an unanswered question: a signature verifies against a public key, but what tells you whose key it is? This lab answers it, and shows the limits of that answer. Certificates are how TLS (Transport Layer Security), the protocol behind every secure website, tells your browser whose key a server holds.

You will inspect a real certificate chain in your browser, then run a script that builds a chain from scratch and runs the checks a browser runs against three server certificates, one good, one expired, one issued for the wrong name.

Objectives assessed

• 3.6: Interpret an X.509 certificate chain and identify the trust assumptions and failure modes of public key infrastructure.

Terminal learning objective (TLO): TLO 3

Time estimate

Step	Time
Step 1: Inspect a real chain	25 min
Step 2: Run the script	10 min
Step 3: The three certificates	30 min
Step 4: Trust assumptions	25 min
Total	90 min

Before you start

• Make sure you have done the week 10 readings.
• Download data/cert_inspect.py from Canvas Files.
• Check that you have the cryptography package from Lab 0.
• Use your own browser and your own machine. Step 1 and Step 4 question 2 ask what they show you.

Steps

Step 1: Inspect a real certificate chain

Visit the Boise State home page and open the certificate your browser received.

• Chrome / Edge / Opera: click the View site information button at the left end of the address bar → Connection is secure → Certificate is valid.
• Firefox: click the site information button (the padlock) at the left end of the address bar → Connection secure → More information → View Certificate.
• Safari: click the site information button (the padlock) in the address field → Show Certificate.

Find the Details or certificate chain view, which shows all the certificates from the server's own certificate up to the root.

Record:

1. How many certificates are in the chain, and the subject name of each, from leaf to root.
2. For the server's own (leaf) certificate: the subject common name, the issuer, the "not before" and "not after" dates, and the Subject Alternative Name list.
3. The signature algorithm and the public key algorithm and size.
4. Take a screenshot of the chain view.

Then answer: the leaf certificate's SAN (Subject Alternative Name) list probably contains more than one name. Why does one certificate cover several names, and what would go wrong if you visited a name that is not in that list?

Step 2: Run the script

python3 cert_inspect.py

It takes a few seconds: it is generating RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) keys. It builds a root CA (certificate authority), an intermediate CA, and three server certificates, then runs five checks against each. Save the full output.

Step 3: The three certificates

1. Quote the five checks and the verdict for each of good, expired, and wrong-name.
2. For expired and wrong-name, exactly one check failed each time. Name the failing check and explain, in two or three sentences each, why a browser treats that single failure as fatal rather than as a warning it can proceed past.
3. The expired certificate is still correctly signed by a CA the browser trusts. Its cryptography is fine. So what is the expiry date actually for? Two or three sentences, citing CyBOK (Cyber Security Body of Knowledge) §18.3.1 (the key life-cycle) or §18.3.7.
4. Change HOSTNAME_BEING_VISITED to "shop.example.edu" and run it again. Paste the three new verdicts. Which certificate is acceptable now, which is not, and why did the picture flip?
5. Change it to "www.exarnple.edu": that is an r and an n, not an m. What does the script say, and what is the real-world version of this attack?

Step 4: What the chain actually rests on

The script prints five checks per certificate. Four of them are arithmetic on the certificate contents. One of them is not.

1. Which check is not arithmetic? Quote it, and explain in your own words what it means and who made that decision on your behalf.
2. Your operating system or browser ships a trust store of root certificates. Find out how many are in yours and say how you found out. (Firefox: Settings → Privacy & Security → View Certificates → Authorities. macOS: Keychain Access → System Roots. Windows: run certmgr.msc → Trusted Root Certification Authorities. An approximate count is fine.)
3. Every one of those organizations can issue a certificate for any name. Describe what happens if one of them is compromised or coerced into issuing a certificate for www.boisestate.edu. Who would notice, and how?
4. Name two mechanisms that exist because of the problem in question 3. CyBOK §18.3.8 discusses certificate status information and other approaches to managing public keys; Certificate Transparency and certificate pinning are two more you can look up. For each, one or two sentences: what it does, and what it still cannot fix.
5. Pull the whole thread together in one paragraph: PKI (public key infrastructure) does not eliminate the need to trust somebody. What it does is change who you have to trust, and how many of them. Argue for or against that statement using something specific from this lab.

What to submit

One Canvas submission containing:

1. Your Step 1 records and the screenshot of the real chain.
2. Your full script output from the first run.
3. Numbered answers to Steps 1, 3, and 4, including the modified-run outputs.

Rubric

Row	What is assessed	Points
1	Step 1: real chain correctly recorded (chain length, subjects, dates, SAN list, algorithms) with a screenshot, and the multi-name SAN question answered	8
2	Step 3, questions 1-3: checks and verdicts quoted; the single failing check identified in each case and correctly explained; the purpose of expiry explained beyond "so it stops working"	10
3	Step 3, questions 4-5: both modified runs shown with correct verdicts, and the homograph/lookalike-domain attack identified	12
4	Step 4: the trust-store check identified as the non-arithmetic one, a root count found and sourced, the CA-compromise scenario reasoned through, two mechanisms named with their limits, and a defended position on the closing statement	8
	Total	38

AI disclosure

You may use AI (artificial intelligence) tools on this assignment. If you do, add one or two sentences saying which tool and what for, per the AI policy.