On Friday 28 November 2008 17:13:54 Magnus Hagander wrote:
> Matching *only* as the first character will make it impossible to make
> certificates for "www*.domain.com", which is AFAIK fairly popular - and
> one of the examples you'll find on CA sites. But it would be fairly easy
> to add this restriction if people feel that's a better way.
Are there actual technical or administrative or security arguments for or
against this? For example, what are the criteria one has to fulfill in order
to get such a certificate? Or is there a "defensive certification" security
line of reasoning?
Now certificate issuing is a real business, so we need to play in that context
as well, but I would like to dig a little deeper why things should be done in
a certain way.
I am quite confortable, for example, with * matching subdomains, because if I
own example.com, then I can create any level of subdomain I want, without
making a real difference to user/client program. But then I don't really get
the point of having * inside of words -- would "www*.domain.com" also match
dots then?