[citrin_ru]

Google made quite a few questionable changes in Chrome (with the rest feeling forced to follow the fashion set by Chrome) and not displaying EV info. Many big organisations use tens of domain some of which look very suspicious. Information in a EV/OV cert is often the only way to establish that a domain operated by the legitimate company (and not by a phisher who registered a similarly looking domain).

[cedilla]

Google and Firefox made the change roughly at the same time -- because there was a lot of evidence that EV indicators simply don't work. Users don't pay attention to them, and even if they did, the idea that company names are unique - even within a jurisdiction - is simply incorrect.

The only upside of EV certificates is that the PKI companies can seek a higher rent.

[citrin_ru]

Even if a higher price is the only EV difference (which not exactly the case) it would be enough make sites with EV certs much less likely to be used in phishing - threat actors want to keep their cost down because they frequently register a lot of domains (much more than most legit companies). And even company names are not unique good luck with registering PayPal Inc or Bank of America Corporation to get an EV cert for your phishing site.

[josephg]

I don’t understand. Why would phishing attacks bother getting EV certificates? Users can’t tell the difference in modern browsers.

[citrin_ru]

Depends on who user is. I hope a typical HN user can find a way to view certificate information even in a modern browser.

The problem is - in modern internet it is very hard to find out who is behind a particular domain: NS/A often point to a CDN or a cloud, info in whois is hidden and all you can see is 'Private'. OV/EV cert is often the only way to know that a domain like acmecorp-invoices.com is used by the same company as acmecorp.com and not phishing (registering a domain similar to the main company's domain is a bad but not uncommon practice).

One of a reasons to get OV/EV cert is to avoid you domain being listed as phishing - if would give a security expect no hints that your suspiciously looking domain is a legit one and not impersonation there is a risk that it would be blocked.

Phisher practically never use OV/EV certs on other hand (probably because they know there are little to no changes they'll get a cert with the target company's name in organizationName).