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by AlyssaRowan 4273 days ago
And let's not forget: NSA already have an almost-irresistibly useful database designed for exactly this purpose (selecting and correlating on attributes of SIGINT-captured SSL/TLS sessions, such as certificates - and they could easily just put a selector on the CommonName or the certificate fingerprint).

You don't have to be the NSA to make a database like that, but it helps. I could build a database broadly like that for certificates/ciphersuites/other metadata myself with active scanning and zmap (and it might make a good weekend project, to examine and contrast RC4 proliferation amongst TLS-encrypted web and mail servers) - but they have a near-realtime-updating passively-constructed one. If the FBI asked them for help, they'd definitely use that.