Report Description

This report, much like our original certs and CAs report, focuses on issuers of SSL enabling certificates found on web servers. Unlike our original report, however, this report has a couple of key differences to it:

• Reports on top 100 CAs. The original report only paid attention to the major CAs at the time the report was produced. This report lists the top 100 CAs for the month. You will find here many self-signing organizations such as universities, telecommunications firms, etc.
• Uses issuer name as identifier. Our original report only counted a certificate towards an organization if we were able to prove, by virtue of verifying the key, that the organization in question actually signed the certificate. This had a notable problem with it - we don't always have the public key of the CA. In at least one case, a CA doesn't make their public key available unless you sign a license agreement.

  This report doesn't have that problem, since it doesn't verify the signatures of the certificates it finds, it only uses the issuer Organization Name to uniquely identify the issuing CA.

CA	September 2003 Count	September 2003 %	August 2003 Count	August 2003 %	Growth %
Verisign	64,989	42.47	62,494	42.52	-0.13
Thawte	33,275	21.74	33,145	22.55	-3.58
Equifax (Geotrust)	20,262	13.24	19,186	13.05	1.43
Comodo Limited	6,666	4.36	5,788	3.94	10.61
Snake Oil, Ltd	2,178	1.42	2,144	1.46	-2.44
SomeOrganization	1,981	1.29	1,847	1.26	3.01
Entrust.net	1,799	1.18	1,708	1.16	1.16
U.S. Government	1,100	0.72	1,060	0.72	-0.34
The USERTRUST Network	613	0.40	591	0.40	-0.39
IPS Certification Authority s.l.	538	0.35	512	0.35	0.92
Plesk, Inc.	536	0.35	504	0.34	2.14
Unknown	474	0.31	363	0.25	25.41
Plesk Inc.	462	0.30	465	0.32	-4.58
FreeSSL	414	0.27	324	0.22	22.72
TC TrustCenter for Security in Data Networks GmbH	336	0.22	314	0.21	2.77
GlobalSign nv-sa	271	0.18	249	0.17	4.52
Equifax Secure Inc	228	0.15	252	0.17	-13.11
Ipswitch,Inc.	193	0.13	193	0.13	-3.96
GTE Corporation	184	0.12	180	0.12	-1.83
Deutsche Telekom AG	152	0.10	147	0.10	-0.69
Thawte Certification	141	0.09	137	0.09	-1.16
ispgateway	113	0.07	108	0.07	0.49
Kubota Systems Inc.	100	0.07	102	0.07	-5.84
Advanced Extranet Server	84	0.05	78	0.05	3.43
Internet Widgits Pty Ltd	72	0.05	77	0.05	-10.20
Baltimore Technologies Japan Co.,Ltd.	63	0.04	48	0.03	26.05
Digital Signature Trust Co.	62	0.04	59	0.04	0.92
PKI Partner AB	55	0.04	54	0.04	-2.18
NetLock Halozatbiztonsagi Kft.	55	0.04	49	0.03	7.80
CETI	50	0.03	53	0.04	-9.40
SOGO KEIBI HOSHO CO.LTD	48	0.03	52	0.04	-11.35
TAIWAN-CA.COM Inc.	44	0.03	44	0.03	-3.96
Positive Software	40	0.03	35	0.02	9.76
Beocity	40	0.03	40	0.03	-3.96
community musician	39	0.03	39	0.03	-3.96
XYZ Corporation	39	0.03	39	0.03	-3.96
Webmin Software	39	0.03	34	0.02	10.16
Ensim Corporation	39	0.03	40	0.03	-6.36
IceWarp Software	38	0.02	32	0.02	14.05
CyberTrust Japan, Inc.	38	0.02	44	0.03	-17.06
University of Florida	37	0.02	37	0.03	-3.96
Tele Danmark	36	0.02	35	0.02	-1.22
Deutsches Forschungsnetz	36	0.02	38	0.03	-9.02
WebMoney Transfer	35	0.02	34	0.02	-1.14
Unizeto Sp. z o.o.	35	0.02	38	0.03	-11.54
SCNC	35	0.02	32	0.02	5.04
NeoNova B.V.	35	0.02	34	0.02	-1.14
KICA	29	0.02	27	0.02	3.15
Franke & Partner	29	0.02	29	0.02	-3.96
Your Organization	27	0.02	25	0.02	3.72
Stalker Software, Inc.	27	0.02	25	0.02	3.72
SWsoft, Inc.	27	0.02	0	0.00	N/A
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	26	0.02	22	0.01	13.50
HJ.NET	25	0.02	25	0.02	-3.96
University of Maryland	24	0.02	23	0.02	0.22
Onyx Internet	24	0.02	24	0.02	-3.96
OCC	23	0.02	22	0.01	0.40
ICS_TREE	23	0.02	18	0.01	22.72
CNRS	23	0.02	21	0.01	5.19
cv. Candi Internet	22	0.01	20	0.01	5.64
Temp Certificate!	22	0.01	20	0.01	5.64
Advantagecom Networks, Inc.	22	0.01	23	0.02	-8.14
Sun Microsystems Inc	21	0.01	20	0.01	0.84
Root CA	21	0.01	15	0.01	34.46
PVT a.s.	21	0.01	16	0.01	26.05
KMD	21	0.01	21	0.01	-3.96
Apache HTTP Server	21	0.01	18	0.01	12.05
ROOT	20	0.01	20	0.01	-3.96
FAS	20	0.01	0	0.00	N/A
media3	19	0.01	19	0.01	-3.96
Stargate.Net, Inc.	19	0.01	19	0.01	-3.96
University of Waterloo	18	0.01	16	0.01	8.04
University of Helsinki	18	0.01	18	0.01	-3.96
DeZines Web Hosting	18	0.01	18	0.01	-3.96
CsideNet	18	0.01	18	0.01	-3.96
BSG	18	0.01	15	0.01	15.25
Webmin Webserver	17	0.01	0	0.00	N/A
Technische Universitaet Chemnitz	17	0.01	17	0.01	-3.96
ICP-Brasil	17	0.01	18	0.01	-9.30
HAL interactive, d.o.o.	17	0.01	17	0.01	-3.96
Carnegie Mellon University	17	0.01	15	0.01	8.84
Web Hosting	16	0.01	16	0.01	-3.96
Logacont AG	16	0.01	16	0.01	-3.96
INFN	16	0.01	15	0.01	2.44
FNMT	16	0.01	15	0.01	2.44
Aaex Corp.	16	0.01	15	0.01	2.44
kundenserver.de	15	0.01	13	0.01	10.81
Usermin Webserver	15	0.01	0	0.00	N/A
UUNET UK	15	0.01	15	0.01	-3.96
UNESP	15	0.01	15	0.01	-3.96
Sedo GmbH	15	0.01	0	0.00	N/A
Register4less	15	0.01	15	0.01	-3.96
Akamai	15	0.01	14	0.01	2.90
1&1 Internet Limited	15	0.01	0	0.00	N/A
The Chinese University of Hong Kong	14	0.01	14	0.01	-3.96
Postecom s.p.a.	14	0.01	14	0.01	-3.96
NIH	14	0.01	17	0.01	-20.91
My Company Ltd	14	0.01	15	0.01	-10.36
University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point (UWSP)	13	0.01	13	0.01	-3.96
Universitaet Karlsruhe	13	0.01	13	0.01	-3.96

Note: Readers are cautioned that the Growth percentages are based on a CA's market share penetration rather than the absolute number of certificates we detected. Thus, it is possible for the number of certificates to increase, while the growth is actually a negative value.