On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:38:53 +0100 Ben Laurie <b...@links.org> wrote: > On 28/07/2010 14:05, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > > It is not always the case that a dead technology has failed > > because of infeasibility or inapplicability. I'd say that a > > number of fine technologies have failed for other reasons. > > However, at some point, it becomes incumbent upon the proponents > > of a failed technology to either demonstrate that it can be made > > to work in a clear and convincing way, or to abandon it even if, > > on some level, they are certain that it could be made to work if > > only someone would do it. > > To be clear, I am not a proponent of PKI as we know it, and > certainly the current use of PKI to sign software has never > delivered any actual value, and still wouldn't if revocation worked > perfectly. > > However, using private keys to prove that you are (probably) dealing > with the same entity as yesterday seems like a useful thing to do.
I agree with that fully. > And still needs revocation. Does it? I will point out that many security systems, like Kerberos, DNSSEC and SSH, appear to get along with no conventional notion of revocation at all. > Is there a good replacement for pk for this purpose? I think public key cryptography is a wonderful thing. I'm just not sure I believe at all in PKI -- that is, persistent certification via certificates, certificate revocation, etc. PKI was invented by Loren Kohnfelder for his bachelor's degree thesis at MIT. It was certainly a fine undergraduate paper, but I think we should forget about it, the way we forget about most undergraduate papers. Perry -- Perry E. Metzger pe...@piermont.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majord...@metzdowd.com