Using SSL (e.g. storing private keys) in SAAS / managed applications

Question

How does one evaluate the risk of storing a private key (secret) on services like the AWS elastic load balancer, or for the purpose of my question: any service non-self managed service that could benefit from SSL ?

In security, I consider "my identity" a key aspect. We have Certificate Signing Request to address this problem on the generation part of the pipeline but it's up to me to manage the rest of the pipeline.

My current ideas:

• I know that I still have to believe that the authority chain is not compromised (vs PGP/distributed processes).
• I still have to believe that the physical access to my servers in the data center is not compromised
• They are asking me to create yet another vector of attack. My problem is that the aws services are certainly a target of interest to many attackers. If there is no current problem, there will be, sometime in the future. And they have their own sysadmins, helpdesk, etc that, may or may not, have have access to the keys.
• I do not do it. I store my private keys on my own servers. Traffic is routed and handled at my servers.
• If I had to do it, I would reduce attack time windows by refreshing those keys periodically (I have yet to analyse the consequences of this approach)

Am I being to paranoid or is security being (once more) neglected ?

(I feel that having SSL is a trend but the security of the thing isn't taken seriously anymore)

Answer 1

Is HSM an option?

• CloudHSM: AWS will try to sell you "CloudHSM" for this: https://aws.amazon.com/cloudhsm/ -- I think you pretty much have to take their word (legally enforceable contract or something) for it when they say that it's an actually HSM on real hardware with no back door.

• Keyless SSL: CloudFlare offers something called "Keyless SSL" where you host the HSM in house. https://www.cloudflare.com/ssl/keyless-ssl/

I know that I still have to believe that the authority chain is not compromised (vs PGP/distributed processes).

If your server box is taken over (either by physical access or otherwise) then the hackers also have your SSL private keys. Unless they are in a Hardware Security Module (HSM). From which they are hard/impossible to extract. (Even with physical access, a large budget and lots of time.)