Termination of StartCom business

TL;DR for those who forgot the back story: StartCom was a low-cost certificate authority that sold to interests whose web of ownership links back to a telecom owned by the authoritarian government of China.

Given the brazen nature of that government's internet surveillance practices, that alone was cause for suspicion, and then Apple, Google, and Microsoft all stopped trusting Startcom-issued certificates after an investigation concluded that WoSign intentionally mis-issued certificates in order to circumvent browser restrictions[1].

So, good riddance.

[1]: https://security.googleblog.com/2016/10/distrusting-wosign-a...

I hear a very small violin playing a sad song, just for StartCom/WoSign. Who’d have thought that lying and cheating would cause people to lose trust in a company whose only offering is trust?

Received an email too:

Dear customer,

As you are surely aware, the browser makers distrusted StartCom around a year ago and therefore all the end entity certificates newly issued by StartCom are not trusted by default in browsers.

The browsers imposed some conditions in order for the certificates to be re-accepted. While StartCom believes that these conditions have been met, it appears there are still certain difficulties forthcoming. Considering this situation, the owners of StartCom have decided to terminate the company as a Certification Authority as mentioned in Startcom´s website.

StartCom will stop issuing new certificates starting from January 1st, 2018 and will provide only CRL and OCSP services for two more years.

StartCom would like to thank you for your support during this difficult time.

StartCom is contacting some other CAs to provide you with the certificates needed. In case you don´t want us to provide you an alternative, please, contact us at certmaster@startcomca.com

Please let us know if you need any further assistance with the transition process. We deeply apologize for any inconveniences that this may cause.

Good