Definition
Public Key Infrastructure is the trust chain of certificate authorities, registries, and validation processes that underpin web encryption. Weaknesses at any layer — especially DNS control — can undermine certificate authenticity.
Key Points
- 2026-10-06: ccTLD registry compromise exposed DV validation as single point of failure for cert issuance (cctld-registry-hijack)
- Google: CAs did not act improperly; attack succeeded because attackers controlled authoritative DNS
- Defense-in-depth: CT log monitoring, browser emergency blocks (CRLSets), restrictive CAA, registry security hardening
Related
- tls-certificates
- cctld-registry-hijack
- domain-validation
- certificate-transparency
- application-security