[145436] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: A mighty fortress is our PKI, Part II
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven Bellovin)
Wed Jul 28 10:06:42 2010
From: Steven Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
In-Reply-To: <4C5020CD.4020800@links.org>
Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:48:14 -0400
Cc: Peter Gutmann <pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz>, cryptography@metzdowd.com
To: Ben Laurie <ben@links.org>
On Jul 28, 2010, at 8:21 33AM, Ben Laurie wrote:
> On 28/07/2010 13:18, Peter Gutmann wrote:
>> Ben Laurie <ben@links.org> writes:
>>=20
>>> I find your response strange. You ask how we might fix the problems, =
then you=20
>>> respond that since the world doesn't work that way right now, the =
fixes won't=20
>>> work. Is this just an exercise in one-upmanship? You know more ways =
the world=20
>>> is broken than I do?
>>=20
>> It's not just that the world doesn't work that way now, it's quite =
likely that=20
>> it'll never work that way (for the case of PKI/revocations mentioned =
in the=20
>> message, not the original SNI). We've been waiting for between 20 =
and 30=20
>> years (depending on what you define as the start date) for PKI to =
start=20
>> working, and your reponse seems to indicate that we should wait even =
harder. =20
>> If I look at the mechanisms we've got now, I can identify that =
commercial PKI=20
>> isn't helping, and revocations aren't helping, and work around that. =
I'm=20
>> after effective practical solutions, not just "a solution exists, =
QED"=20
>> solutions.
>=20
> The core problem appears to be a lack of will to fix the problems, not =
a
> lack of feasible technical solutions.
>=20
> I don't know why it should help that we find different solutions for =
the
> world to ignore?
There seem to be at least three different questions here: bad code =
(i.e., that Windows doesn't check the revocation status properly), the =
UI issue, and the conceptual question of what should replace the current =
PKI+{CRL,OCSP} model. For the last issue, I'd note that using pki =
instead of PKI (i.e., many different per-realm roots, authorization =
certificates rather than identity certificates, etc.) doesn't help: =
Realtek et al. still have no better way or better incentive to revoke =
their own widely-used keys.
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
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