this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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I don't know what the process is like to become a certificate authority. I imagine the answer is technically yes but realistically no, at least not as an individual. You'd be providing a critical piece of internet infrastructure, so you'd need the world to consider you capable of providing the service reliably while also capable of securing the keys used to sign certificates so they can't be forged. It's a big responsibility that involves putting a LOT of trust in the authority, so I don't think it's taken very lightly.
Correct, though to be pedantic anyone can be a CA- you just generate a cert with the right bits to say it's a ca certificate and then use it to sign any other certificate you want.
But the only devices that will consider your signature worth anything are ones you also install your ca certificate on. So it's useful and common in internal networks but isn't really what is being asked here.
The hard part is getting in the root CA store of operating systems and browsers. As far as I know they are all maintained independently with their own requirements.