On Sun, 26 Jun 2011, Marsh Ray wrote: > How about these questions: > When is a centralized root list necessary and when can it be avoided? > How can the quality of root CAs be improved? > How can the number of root CAs be reduced in general? > How can the number of root CAs be reduced in specific situations?
I think the last of these is very important, because it's the difference between [today] I want to connect to https://www.bank.com or https://www.airline.com. If *any* CA in the world has falsely issued a certificate for that domain, then I could be talking to a phisher or MITM and be none the wiser. [if we used certificates a bit more wisely] I want to connect to https://www.bank.com or https://www.airline.com. If bank.com's or airline.com's CA has falsely issued a certificate for that domain, then I could be talking to a phisher or MITM and be none the wiser. The latter is far from perfect, but it's a lot better than the former. I think the ssh model ("cross your fingers the first time you connect, but then remember the info so future connections are safer if that first time was actually ok") has a lot of potential. I think there's a firefox extension that does this for certificates, but I forget its name... ciao, -- -- "Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]" <[email protected]> Dept of Astronomy & IUCSS, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA "Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral." -- quote by Freire / poster by Oxfam _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list [email protected] http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
