Last year, Apple removed the Extended Validation (EV) certificate indicators from Safari on both iOS 12 and Mojave. Now, Google and Mozilla are following suit by removing the EV visual indicators starting from Chrome 77 and Firefox 70.
What are Extended Validation Certificates
Introduced in 2007, Extended Validation Certificates are issued to applicants after they are verified as a genuine legal entity by a certificate authority (CA). The baseline requirements for an EV certificate are outlined by the CA/Browser forum. Web browsers show a green address bar when visiting a website that is using EV Certificate. You will see the company name alongside the padlock symbol in the green address bar. These certificates can often be expensive. DigiCert charges $344 USD per year, Symantec prices its EV certificate at $995 USD a year, and Thawte at $299 USD a year.
Why Chrome and Firefox are removing EV indicators
In a survey conducted by Google, users of the Chrome and Safari browsers were asked how much they trusted a website with and without EV indicators. The results of the survey showed that browser identity indicators do not have much effect on users’ secure choices. About 85 percent of users did not find anything strange about a Google login page with the fake URL “accounts.google.com.amp.tinyurl.com”.
Seeing these results and prior academic work, the Google Security US team concluded that positive security indicators are largely ineffective. “As part of a series of data-driven changes to Chrome’s security indicators, the Chrome Security UX team is announcing a change to the Extended Validation (EV) certificate indicator on certain websites starting in Chrome 77,” the team wrote in a Google group. Another reason behind this decision was that the EV indicators takes up valuable screen space.
Starting with Chrome 77, the information related to EV indicators will be shown in Page Info that appears when the lock icon is clicked instead of the EV badge:
Source: Google
Citing similar reasons, the team behind Firefox shared their intention to remove EV indicators from Firefox 70 for desktop yesterday. They also plan to add this information to the identity panel instead of showing it on the identity block. “The effectiveness of EV has been called into question numerous times over the last few years, there are serious doubts whether users notice the absence of positive security indicators and proof of concepts have been pitting EV against domains for phishing,” the team wrote.
Many CAs market EV certificates as something that builds visitor confidence, protects them against phishing, and identity fraud. Looking at these advancements, Troy Hunt, a web security expert and the creator of “Have I Been Pwned?” concluded that EV certificates are now dead. In a blog post, he questioned the CAs, “how long will it take the CAs selling EV to adjust their marketing to align with reality?”
Users have mixed feelings about this change. “Good riddance, IMO. They never meant much, to begin with, the validation procedures were basically “can you pay the fee?”, and they only added to user confusion,” a user said on Hacker News.
Many users believe that EV indicators are valuable for financial transactions. A user commented on Reddit, “As a financial institution it was always much easier to just say “make sure it says <Bank name> in the URL bar and it’s green” when having a customer on the phone than “Please click on settings -> advanced settings -> security -> display certificate and check the value subject”.”
To know more, check out the official announcements by Chrome and Firefox teams.
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