North American Network Operators Group
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Buying and selling root certificates

  • From: Sean Donelan
  • Date: Wed Apr 28 20:01:50 2004 
Not that SSL certificates are worth the paper they aren't printed
on; I still find this vaguely disturbing.  Just who do you think your
computer is trusting?

http://www.websheji.com/domain-names/news/id506.html
  Bob Parsons, CEO of Go Daddy, said that Starfield Technologies, a
  subsidiary of the company, bought an unused root certificate, trusted by
  99% percent of the browsers from ValiCert Inc more than a year ago has
  been developing the system since then.

I'm not that interested in SSL for web servers, but I have noticed a
gradual increase in the number of mail servers willing to STARTTLS with
mine.  I was experimenting with trying to verify some of the certificates
presented, its not real security, but makes the logs cleaner.