On Tuesday 24 May 2005 15:03, Nemeth, Valentin wrote:
> Hi Ian,

Hi Valentin!

> > Then, logically, a *.TLD cert indicates a valid
> > wildcard range of addresses, and is therefore
> > an identity, albeit a broad one.  But, given that
> > CAs who have nothing to do with TLDs can
> > then issue a wildcard covering an entire TLD,
> > I'd be inclined to say that a political not technical
> > decision should be made that a *.TLD be treated
> > as a special case that gets a special treatment.
>
> Any decent CA should block a *.tld cert, even a *.d1.tld as well, where d1
> is a 'generic one'. For example it would be almost just as bad to issue
> *.co.uk or *.com.au as *.net. The list of these domains is pretty long and
> isn't exactly static.


OK, so your answer is the browser doesn't
need to do anything about it because it can
just trust CAs to do the job.

I can see that it will be tough to get past that !

Consider this.  Imagine you are Verisign, you
are Boss, CEO and President as well as major
stockholder.

Imagine I am Chairman I Ang of the Chinese
Republic of Middle Earth.  I also happen to
be the Chief of staff of the PLA, the legal and
sovereign owner of .CN.  Let's say I'm also a
nice guy, an honourable parent, and I have
pretty daughters too.

I come to you and say, Boss Valentin, I will
award you a 99 year lease on all certificate
operations in China as long as you can issue
me the *.CN certificate.

This is a perfectly valid PKI request.  In
technical and standards terms, this has to
be acceptable.

What's your answer?

If your answer is anything other than "where
do I sign!!!!" why would that be?  Why are you
declining a request from the rightful and sovereign
owner for a certificate over their domain?

And have you considered the likely response
of the other 99 CAs out there?

Luckily this is a hypothetical problem ... We
aren't those people, and I'm such a bad
father I don't have any daughters :-)

But the browser might need to answer this
regardless of how nice we are.

iang
-- 
Advances in Financial Cryptography:
   https://www.financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/000458.html
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