Topic

Certificate Transparency

1 post about Certificate Transparency. Every summary links to the original.

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Posts

Cloudflare
Building a post-quantum certificate authority with Merkle Tree Certificates
The Web PKI faces a scaling problem because post-quantum (PQ) signatures are roughly 40 times larger than classical ones, making direct adoption at Internet scale expensive. Merkle Tree Certificates (MTCs) address this by batching certificates into an append-only Merkle tree, allowing a CA to sign the tree root and clients to verify with a compact inclusion proof. Cloudflare is building a certificate authority that will support MTC issuance, targeting early 2027 for inclusion in Chrome’s new Quantum-resistant Root Store, and will offer standard MTC issuance at no cost. The MTC architecture couples issuance with logging (“issue by logging”), making transparency a first-party property rather than an add-on, which reduces redundancy and scaling overhead. Cloudflare successfully completed an experimental deployment with Chrome and is now moving to full production, but notes that broader ecosystem participation from browsers, CAs, and monitors is needed for the transition.

The best engineering reads, once a week.

Topic

1 post about Certificate Transparency. Every summary links to the original.

Paid picks we use ourselves. Links carry a referral code — a subscription through one earns us a commission at no extra cost to you.

Newest first

Cloudflare
Building a post-quantum certificate authority with Merkle Tree Certificates
The Web PKI faces a scaling problem because post-quantum (PQ) signatures are roughly 40 times larger than classical ones, making direct adoption at Internet scale expensive. Merkle Tree Certificates (MTCs) address this by batching certificates into an append-only Merkle tree, allowing a CA to sign the tree root and clients to verify with a compact inclusion proof. Cloudflare is building a certificate authority that will support MTC issuance, targeting early 2027 for inclusion in Chrome’s new Quantum-resistant Root Store, and will offer standard MTC issuance at no cost. The MTC architecture couples issuance with logging (“issue by logging”), making transparency a first-party property rather than an add-on, which reduces redundancy and scaling overhead. Cloudflare successfully completed an experimental deployment with Chrome and is now moving to full production, but notes that broader ecosystem participation from browsers, CAs, and monitors is needed for the transition.

The best engineering reads, once a week.