On Tuesday 10 May 2005 11:47, Jean-Marc Desperrier wrote:
> Ram A Moskovitz wrote:

> What if I say Bruce Schneier also says similar things ?
> "Identification and Security"
> http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0402.html#6

Right, Bruce is one of those who figured out that there
were fundamental flaws in the way of doing things.  He
wrote a relatively famous recant of his big red book's
philosophy when he discovered that security was
risk-based, not absolute.  That changes everything...

Others include Geer, Rivest, Gutmann, JKW, Clarke,
Davis, Ellison, Wheeler, Brands, Shamir, ... the list of
articles and academic literature is quite long, but the
problem with all the writings is that they only tear down
one or two parts of the puzzle each.

The champion of those who think the PKI architecture
is A-OK is probably Whitfield Diffie.  He seems to be
the only vocal defender of PKI these days.

I feel however a bit embarrassed to sink this discussion
to the level of naming well known names.  Surely the ideas
should be compelling and solid enough that the security
speaks for itself?  No, apparently not, it appears that
because the concepts of PKI cross different disciplines,
the killer assumptions in one area become accepted
gospel in another area;  accountants do not know how
to challenge digital signatures, and programmers do
not know how to challenge separations of roles.

(As a sort of embarrassing example, even though my
own work is quite strong in the use of digital sigs in
contract signing, it was only in the last couple of
years that I discovered that non-repudiation was a
nonsense.)

iang
-- 
http://iang.org/
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