On 6/09/11 1:07 PM, Peter Gutmann wrote:
This is true, but I'm not sure it's particularly relevant. (Who claims that
HSMs are magic pixie dust?)
CAs, when they issue a press release saying "everything's OK, we never lost
control of our private key"? Some European countries also seem to have a
near-fixation on smart cards for certificate use when they really only
contribute epsilon to the overall security.
Just on this one point alone: the European QC project is about smart
cards, full stop. It can be seen as a European-wide rollout of
individual signing cards for all European citizens, backed up through
the Digital Signing Directive and government controlled quality measures.
For European CAs, the SSL certificate is a sort of vestigial add-on,
which is now seen in the DigiNotar affair. In contrast, the American
tradition is almost all about SSL certificates, and individuals are the
poor scruffy cousin.
The point is that security is
more than just an HSM or smart card.
In this European context, the use of smart cards or HSMs to protect the
signing key is a marketing certainty and not a risk management decision.
That is, if the client keys are "protected" by a smart card by legal
dictat, then the signing key needs to be at least that well protected.
iang
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