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	December 2003 Count	December 2003 %	November 2003 Count	November 2003 %	Growth %
Verisign	68,049	41.41	67,719	42.02	-1.43
Thawte	33,894	20.63	33,761	20.95	-1.52
Equifax (Geotrust)	22,994	13.99	22,008	13.65	2.49
Comodo Limited	8,621	5.25	8,005	4.97	5.64
SomeOrganization	2,342	1.43	2,201	1.37	4.38
Snake Oil, Ltd	2,176	1.32	2,243	1.39	-4.84
Entrust.net	1,963	1.19	1,913	1.19	0.66
U.S. Government	1,229	0.75	1,194	0.74	0.97
The USERTRUST Network	676	0.41	649	0.40	2.17
Unknown	650	0.40	571	0.35	11.66
Plesk, Inc.	567	0.35	583	0.36	-4.60
IPS Certification Authority s.l.	544	0.33	536	0.33	-0.44
FreeSSL	530	0.32	477	0.30	8.99
Plesk Inc.	421	0.26	424	0.26	-2.60
TC TrustCenter for Security in Data Networks GmbH	397	0.24	389	0.24	0.11
GlobalSign nv-sa	301	0.18	286	0.18	3.24
Ipswitch,Inc.	216	0.13	214	0.13	-0.99
GTE Corporation	214	0.13	208	0.13	0.92
Deutsche Telekom AG	203	0.12	196	0.12	1.59
Equifax Secure Inc	199	0.12	201	0.12	-2.88
SWsoft, Inc.	129	0.08	92	0.06	37.54
Thawte Certification	124	0.08	133	0.08	-8.55
ispgateway	120	0.07	115	0.07	2.36
Baltimore Technologies Japan Co.,Ltd.	118	0.07	110	0.07	5.23
Kubota Systems Inc.	101	0.06	101	0.06	-1.91
Advanced Extranet Server	87	0.05	84	0.05	1.59
Digital Signature Trust Co.	69	0.04	71	0.04	-4.67
Internet Widgits Pty Ltd	66	0.04	69	0.04	-6.17
NetLock Halozatbiztonsagi Kft.	62	0.04	57	0.04	6.70
IceWarp Software	55	0.03	47	0.03	14.79
Positive Software	52	0.03	47	0.03	8.53
CETI	49	0.03	52	0.03	-7.57
XYZ Corporation	47	0.03	41	0.03	12.45
CsideNet	45	0.03	22	0.01	100.64
TAIWAN-CA.COM Inc.	44	0.03	46	0.03	-6.17
Unizeto Sp. z o.o.	42	0.03	39	0.02	5.64
Beocity	40	0.02	40	0.02	-1.91
University of Florida	39	0.02	39	0.02	-1.91
TDC	39	0.02	28	0.02	36.63
Webmin Software	38	0.02	43	0.03	-13.31
Communitymusician	38	0.02	0	0.00	N/A
WebMoney Transfer	37	0.02	36	0.02	0.82
SCNC	36	0.02	35	0.02	0.89
Sedo GmbH	35	0.02	18	0.01	90.73
SOGO KEIBI HOSHO CO.LTD	35	0.02	38	0.02	-9.65
Apache HTTP Server	35	0.02	31	0.02	10.75
Hurricane Electric Internet Services	34	0.02	0	0.00	N/A
Deutsches Forschungsnetz	34	0.02	38	0.02	-12.23
NeoNova B.V.	33	0.02	34	0.02	-4.79
Tele Danmark	32	0.02	31	0.02	1.26
KICA	31	0.02	29	0.02	4.86
University of Maryland	29	0.02	25	0.02	13.79
Root CA	29	0.02	31	0.02	-8.24
PKI Partner AB	29	0.02	36	0.02	-20.98
Franke & Partner	29	0.02	29	0.02	-1.91
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	28	0.02	28	0.02	-1.91
Ensim Corporation	28	0.02	29	0.02	-5.29
cv. Candi Internet	27	0.02	26	0.02	1.86
Stalker Software, Inc.	27	0.02	28	0.02	-5.41
OCC	27	0.02	29	0.02	-8.67
CNRS	27	0.02	27	0.02	-1.91
ICS_TREE	26	0.02	26	0.02	-1.91
Your Organization	25	0.02	26	0.02	-5.68
Sun Cobalt	25	0.02	22	0.01	11.47
Sun Microsystems Inc	23	0.01	22	0.01	2.55
Akamai	23	0.01	21	0.01	7.43
University of Helsinki	21	0.01	21	0.01	-1.91
Temp Certificate!	21	0.01	20	0.01	3.00
ROOT	21	0.01	22	0.01	-6.37
PVT a.s.	21	0.01	21	0.01	-1.91
University of Waterloo	20	0.01	18	0.01	8.99
FAS	20	0.01	20	0.01	-1.91
Advantagecom Networks, Inc.	20	0.01	20	0.01	-1.91
1&1 Internet Limited	20	0.01	19	0.01	3.25
UniCERT Brasil Certificadora	19	0.01	18	0.01	3.54
Technische Universitaet Chemnitz	19	0.01	19	0.01	-1.91
SCANDTRUST AB	19	0.01	15	0.01	24.25
ICP-Brasil	19	0.01	18	0.01	3.54
media3	18	0.01	18	0.01	-1.91
kundenserver.de	18	0.01	16	0.01	10.35
The Chinese University of Hong Kong	18	0.01	17	0.01	3.86
Onyx Internet	18	0.01	18	0.01	-1.91
Japan Certification Services, Inc.	18	0.01	17	0.01	3.86
FNMT	18	0.01	18	0.01	-1.91
Carnegie Mellon University	18	0.01	18	0.01	-1.91
Career Education Corporation	18	0.01	0	0.00	N/A
Usermin Webserver	17	0.01	17	0.01	-1.91
UNESP	17	0.01	0	0.00	N/A
Stunnel Developers Ltd	17	0.01	14	0.01	19.11
Postecom s.p.a.	17	0.01	16	0.01	4.22
My Company Ltd	17	0.01	0	0.00	N/A
MULTICERT-CA	17	0.01	0	0.00	N/A
Logacont AG	17	0.01	17	0.01	-1.91
INFN	17	0.01	17	0.01	-1.91
Audkenni hf.	17	0.01	15	0.01	11.17
Aaex Corp.	17	0.01	17	0.01	-1.91
Web Hosting	16	0.01	16	0.01	-1.91
Stargate.Net, Inc.	16	0.01	16	0.01	-1.91
HAL interactive, d.o.o.	16	0.01	16	0.01	-1.91
DeZines Web Hosting	16	0.01	16	0.01	-1.91

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.