That's one possibility, and quite scary because someone with that private key could hijack any SSL connection to any site, not just Google. More likely is that Iran caused DigiNotar to issue them a valid .google.com certificate via social engineering, bribery, or hacking. This is slightly less scary because only .google.com would be affected.
Either way, IMHO DigiNotar's root certificate should be revoked and they should be barred from participating in the CA system ever again. The seriousness of SSL MITM attacks is such that a "one strike and you're out" policy is warranted. With so much commerce running over SSL these days, possession of the private key of a CA's root certificate would allow you to implement plots worthy of a James Bond supervillan.
Great! I'm glad DigiNotar will be punished for this lapse. Too bad it takes a code update to revoke their certificate. This won't be the last CA compromise we see.
Indeed. I strongly suspect too that it's only "the first one we've seen", and not "the first one".
I have very little doubt that most nation-state sized adversaries have the ability to forge whatever certs they want. It's only careful use of those forged certs (or dumb luck) by the agencies using them that have kept them out of the blogosphere...
Yeah, if NSA doesn't have at least one root CA key they're not doing their jobs. What we need is an alternative to the centralized CA system, like TOFU POP MONK.
Either way, IMHO DigiNotar's root certificate should be revoked and they should be barred from participating in the CA system ever again. The seriousness of SSL MITM attacks is such that a "one strike and you're out" policy is warranted. With so much commerce running over SSL these days, possession of the private key of a CA's root certificate would allow you to implement plots worthy of a James Bond supervillan.