On 21/06/11 4:15 PM, Marsh Ray wrote:
On 06/21/2011 12:18 PM, Ian G wrote:
On 18/06/11 8:16 PM, Marsh Ray wrote:
On 06/18/2011 03:08 PM, slinky wrote:
.... But we know there are still hundreds of
"trusted" root CAs, many from governments, that will silently install
themselves into Windows at the request of any website. Some of these
even have code signing capabilities.
Hmmm... I'm currently working on a risk analysis of this sort of thing.
Can you say more about this threat scenario?
I did a blog post about it a while back: http://extendedsubset.com/?p=33
This was about the CNNIC situation,
Ah, the "I'm not in control of my own root list" threat scenario.
See, the thing there is that CNNIC has a dirty reputation. But CNNIC
passed the test to get into the root lists.
Which do you want? A CA gets into a root list because it is nice and
pretty and bribes its way in? This was the old way, pre 1995. Or there
is an objective test that all CAs have an equivalent hurdle in passing?
This was the post 1995 way.
There's no easy answer to this. Really, the question being asked is
wrong. The question really should be something like "do we need a
centralised root list?"
since then we've seen Tunisia MITM
its citizens and they have a national CA as well.
Yup.
Basically, MS Windows has a list of "Trusted Root CAs". But the list
displayed there is actually just a subset of the CAs that are
effectively trusted. When you browse to a site with a CA not in this
list, Windows can contact Microsoft and on-the-fly add that cert to your
trusted root store. Innovative, huh?
This is the geek's realisation that they cannot control their list of
"trusted" CAs. Their judgement is undermined, as MS Windows' root list
has gone the next step to dynamic control, which means that the users'
ability to verify the root is undermined a bit more by not having an
ability to stop the future dynamic enhancements.
In practice, if we assume a centralised root list, this is probably the
better result.
It works quite simply: 1 billion users don't check the root list, at
all. They rely entirely on the ueber-CA to generate a good root list.
A tiny fraction of that number (under 1 million, or 0.1%) know about
something called a root list, something perversely called "trust" bits,
and the ability to fiddle those bits. They do that, and imagine that
they have achieved some higher level of security. But, this technique
has difficulty establishing itself as anything more than a placebo.
Any model that offers a security feature to a trivially tiny minority,
to the expense of the dominant majority, is daft. The logical
conclusion of 1.5 decades worth of experience with centralised root
lists is that we, in the aggregate, may as well trust Microsoft and the
other root vendors' root list entirely.
Or: find another model. Change the assumptions. Re-do the security
engineering.
iang
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