Root Causes: A PKI and Security Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Root Causes 658: The Trouble with X9 Certificates Aug 26, 2026

Show notes

X9 is a consortium certificate for interbanking applications. There is a common misunderstanding that X9 certificates are a public-trust surrogate for mTLS using WebPKI certificates. We clarify why this is not the case.

Root Causes 657: What Is Chaos Engineering? Aug 24, 2026

Show notes

"Chaos engineering" describes the practice of injecting faults into a system to see what happens. This is a known strategy for deterministic systems, but with the advent of non-deterministic AI systems, chaos engineering has taken on greater importance.

Root Causes 656: The Trouble with Recursive AI Training Aug 21, 2026

Show notes

Since frontier-model AIs have been trained on a large portion of published human knowledge, widespread publication of incorrect information can taint AI results. As more AI-generated slop finds its way onto the internet, this runs the risk of further poisoning AI results. This ultimately can result in completely unusable information.

Root Causes 655: Why Not to Create Your Own Private CA Aug 19, 2026

Show notes

It is possible to use common tools like OpenSSL to create your own ML-DSA private CA. This is a great tool for development and research projects, but Jason explains the pitfalls with trying to do this for production systems.

Root Causes 654: What's the Difference Between ML-DSA and ML-KEM? Aug 17, 2026

Show notes

We are replacing RSA with the combination of ML-DSA and ML-KEM. We explain the naming convention and specifically what these two algorithms do.

Root Causes 653: Post Quantum Civilization Aug 14, 2026

Show notes

Jason explains de-quantization, which is the practice of using our knowledge of how to use a quantum computer to reframe problems for processing using traditional computing architecture.

Root Causes 652: Choosing WebPKI Deprecation Dates Aug 12, 2026

Show notes

There is no CABF or root program rule preventing public CAs from implementing new requirements earlier than their assigned due dates. We discuss reasons to implement a rule early and how early it should be.

Root Causes 651: Look at a Calendar Aug 10, 2026

Show notes

It is surprising that we continue to see root expirations occur at the most inopportune times. Weekends, public holidays, even New Year's Eve. In this episode we have simple advice to anybody setting up a new root, which is "look at a calendar."

Root Causes 650: Is It Time to Stop Saying SSL? Aug 07, 2026

Show notes

SSL hasn't been a standard in use for nearly thirty years, but we still use the word. We discuss why that is, what else we might say, and the expected effect of Merkle Tree Certificates (MTC) on our technical vocabulary.

Root Causes 649: Client Authentication Certificate Use Cases Aug 05, 2026

Show notes

With the upcoming deprecation of client authentication using publicly trusted TLS certificates, we go over the common use cases for these certificates. We discuss the reasons public trust is often chosen and how to transition away from it.

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