This is a very interesting narration of the history of Certificate Authorities – who issue Public SSL certificates.
It started in 1995 with Thawte and VeriSign. Formation of CA/Browser Forum in 2005. First “Baseline Requirement for the Issuance and Management of Publicly-Trusted Certificates” in 2011.
In 2010 Symantec bought Verisign’s Authentication business for USD 1.3 Billion. Issues and security challenges faced by customers. Google distrusts Symantec and DigiCert comes to the rescue.
In 2015 IdenTrust allowed Let’s Encrypt to use its root certificate and in 5 years it has issued over a billion free Domain Validated certificates to over 225 million websites.
The interesting part is at the end about Blockchain and Certificate Authorities.
Perhaps it misses the mention of Certificate Authority Failures over a period of time.
Read the full article here: https://www.ssldragon.com/blog/the-history-of-certificate-authorities/