[17918] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: ID "theft" -- so what?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (James A. Donald)
Sat Jul 16 17:14:52 2005
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
From: "James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com>
To: Cryptography <cryptography@metzdowd.com>
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 14:26:17 -0700
--
Aram Perez
> There are at least two public key infrastructures that
> do NOT require CAs: PGP and SPKI.
SPKI seems to me committees pondering what they might do
with public keys, rather than an infrastructure.
> But like in so many real life cases, the best
> technology does not always win and we are stuck with
> the system that garnered the most business/ economic
> support
In real life the best technology usually does win. CA
based PKI has lasted so long because it has not come
under real world attack by real world adversaries until
recently. Hypothetical problems have only recently
become real, as at last people have come to base the
movement of valuable goods on promises exchanged over
the internet.
A problem with the dot com boom, with all booms, was
premature investment, leading to malinvestment. Existent
PKI is one more piece of malinvestment, one more boom
hangover. Such hangovers can last a long time - After
eighty years we are still getting out from under the
excessively vertical integration of car assembly lines
established in the nineteen twenties, but since the
physical obstacles to change are much less in this case,
this hangover will not last nearly so long.
--digsig
James A. Donald
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Fa1OKlHyGdiwEhSvi7sXvTo92wIBZ573qPLTCeLo
4TtZu3a5eWXjqK4Ol9jEIvUqnJ22YwURQUJdaf5xF
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