Although I understand the basic theory behind certificates and asymmetric crypto

Question

Although I understand the basic theory behind certificates and asymmetric cryptography, I'm not quite sure on the details of the X.509 protocol. I'm wondering what attacker model a given CA requires to attack the TLS/SSL traffic. Specifically, if I assume my CA to leak the private key it issued me to a third party Mallory (Mallory might also be identical to CA), can passive eavesdropping of TCP packets enable Mallory to get the plaintext? Or does Mallory need Man-In-The-Middle capabilities to read the plaintext?

My rationale for this is as follows: if the certifiacte merely enables a verified Diffie-Hellman, you have to interfere with the key exchange to be able to fool server and client into using your own key(s). But does X.509 do so?

Explanation / Answer

CA does not issue private keys to anybody. CA signs (using its own private key, which is kept very secret) your public key. The CA has no access to your private key at all.

If the CA

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