Which SSL (www.whichssl.com)

I need to buy a SSL for a small private WEBDAV site (also accessible
as an ordinary web site) that I will use to distribute documents to
various current and future customers.  It is being hosted by a hosting
company in another state.  There will actually be different sites
(different groups of customers get different documents), but all
running on one server.

I have been quoted several rates on SSL certificates from several
different vendors.   My hosting company has no preference, and is just
passing the cost on to me regardless of who I go with.

I found a company called Comodo that has one for $50/year called
Instant SSL.   The Thawte one is $200.  VeriSign is $340.   These
prices are per year.

I was sent a URL with comparisons of which SSL to get.  It is a site
run by Comodo.  http://www.whichssl.com/

My needs are modest.   I am not doing e-commerce, just distributing
semi-sensitive documents.   I want it done over SSL, because I don’t
want cleartext passwords to be used.

 I would have the hosting company make one up, but my customers are
not computer savvy, and I don’t want their browsers to come up with a
message saying something about the certificate not be trusted, or
something like that.  As long as no warning comes up, I want to spend
the least amount on money, especially since I need to buy one for each
of these sites.


Here is what the hosting company says:
----------------------------------------------------
I thought I would check out a few more options for SSL certificates
for you. There is another product available that sounds like it might
better suit your needs. I have done a little comparison shopping on
your behalf and all you have to do is choose which supplier you would
like to go with.
 
It is important to note that Certificate Root Authorities (the
companies that sell SSL certificates) should be listed as having 99%
ubiquity among the popular Internet browser products. If you purchased
a server certificate from a company who has only 90% ubiquity, more
than 63 million users on the Internet would not trust your
certificate. Keeping that in mind, I chose to compare only companies
with 99% ubiquity.
  
Certificate warranties are effectively the insurance offered against
an SSL Provider mis-issuing a Certificate. The warranties offered
range in value from nil to $250,000.
 
InstantSSL looks to be the best bet for pricing.
----------------------------------------------------


Is there a downside to the $50 one?   Is there a cheaper one that
would work?

Hi sherpaj,

Your need appears to be for certificates which:

- are inexpensive

- are suitable for protecting passwords used to obtain
  access to semi-sensitive documents, and for protecting
  the semi-sensitive documents themselves

- are compatible with a wide range of browsers, and will
  not cause confusion or hassles for your customers

Let's examine these points one by one.

The least expensive of the certificates you mention is Comodo
InstantSSL at $49 per year. You can improve on that pricing by buying
more than one certificate, or by buying three-year certificates. The
cheapest price advertised by Comodo is $100 per three-year
certificate:

Discounted Pricing Matrix
http://www.instantssl.com/products/pricing.html

An even cheaper option is ChainedSSL, which claims to be chained to
the same root certificate as InstantSSL and therefore offers the same
browser ubiquity. ChainedSSL is available from FreeSSL.com for $25 per
certificate. However, there's no mention of the renewal price so it
would be worth being a bit wary - especially as their FreeSSL
certificates are only "free" for first three months.

Introducing ChainedSSL!
http://www.freessl.com/

It is feasible to crack a 40-bit certificate, although it's
computationally expensive. You say that your documents are
"semi-sensitive", so a 40-bit certificate might still be acceptable.
However, I can see no reason for you to use anything other than a
128-bit certificate, as your hosting provider's webserver can handle
it and the number of browsers that cannot handle 128-bit encryption is
rapidly dwindling.

Browser compatibility, and ease-of-use for your customers, are
important points. The comparison chart at WhichSSL
http://www.whichssl.com/faq/compatibility.html
compares browser compatibility for certificates from eight Certificate
Authorities. As you point out, this chart and the whichssl site are a
marketing exercise of Comodo designed to promote their InstantSSL
product. Even so, browser coverage of Verisign and Thawte certificates
is shown as 99.5% versus 99.3% for InstantSSL. This 0.2% difference
may or may not be significant to you.

The difference in browser ubiquity between InstantSSL and
Verisign/Thawte would be slightly greater if earlier browser versions
were considered. The reason for the difference is that Verisign/Thawte
certificates are directly signed by the certificate that is trusted by
the browser, whereas InstantSSL and ChainedSSL are chained
certificates, signed by an intermediate certificate which is in turn
signed by the certificate that is trusted by the browser. Chained
certificates work fine, but are not supported by early browsers that
do not implement SSL version 3.

SSL version 2 has some security problems, and SSL version 3 support is
widespread. You can find some more details here if you are interested:

Inevstigations about SSL
http://www.eucybervote.org/Reports/MSI-WP2-D7V1-V1.0-02.htm
(see section 3.1.4)

On the topic of browser ubiquity, I should point out that the whichssl
site claims 90.5% browser ubiquity for GeoTrust QuickSSL, whereas
GeoTrust claim 98% support:

GeoTrust - QuickSSL
http://www.geotrust.com/quickssl/

There's not enough information provided to identify the underlying
reason for this discrepancy, but presumably it's due to different
figures for browser market share. A recent question on Google Answers
showed large discrepancies in browser share statistics when measured
in different ways:

What percentage of users still use Netscape 4?
https://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=66714

As you are planning to have multiple secure sites, you may wish to
consider a wildcard certificate. This would require that your sites
are all subdomains of one domain name (such as cloud.yourdomain.com,
rain.yourdomain.com, ice.yourdomain.com etc). I don't know whether
that would fit with your plans, but it is certainly a more economical
option. For example, PremiumSSL from BitEngines/Comodo is from $449
per year for unlimited subdomains on one server:

PremiumSSL Wildcard Certificate
http://instantssl.bitengines.com/en/products/premiumssl_wildcard.html

There are large differences in dollar-limit for the Certificate
Warranties offered by different Certificate Authorities (and even by
the same CA for different products). However, these warranties cover a
very limited range of circumstances and for most people are not a
major factor in making a purchasing decision. If you feel that you may
need this warranty protection, you should have a legal professional
review the offered warranty.

Finally, it's worth noting that there is no guarantee that any vendor
will continue to renew their certificates for the same price that they
are selling them for now. Nevertheless, the general trend is currently
downwards.

Overall, Comodo InstantSSL looks (to me) to be a pretty good match to
your needs - but there are some tradeoffs and only you can make the
final decision.


Additional links:

VeriSign SSL Certificates
http://www.verisign.com/isp/prd/serverid.html

SSL Web Server Certificates from Thawte
https://www.thawte.com/html/RETAIL/ssl/index.html

Using Your Provider's SSL Certificate (Shared SSL)
http://www.psoft.net/HSdocumentation/user/ssl.html
(scroll to last section)


Google search strategy:

ssl comodo verisign thawte
://www.google.com/search?q=ssl%20comodo%20verisign%20thawte

ssl2 ssl3
://www.google.com/search?q=ssl2%20ssl3

"cost to crack" "40-bit"
://www.google.com/search?q=%22cost%20to%20crack%22%20%2240-bit%22


Regards,
eiffel-ga

thanks