"Anders Rundgren" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Lynn,
> 
> Some TTP CAs actually *do* require RP contracts.
> 
> The "only" problem with that is that this is usually also connected
> to RP authentication to OSCP services for payment purposes.
> 
> So even if the certs are stale the information is dynamically
> verified.
> 
> Unfortunately this kind of PKI has scalability issues and their
> promoters (banks) are only losing money.  Therefore VeriSign's model
> in spite of its contractual weaknesses still seems to reign.
> 
> Maybe you are exaggerating the need to sue CAs for huge sums?
> 
> That DNSSEC could kill the SSL CA is probably true but it seems that
> DNSSEC suffers from a dysfunctional business model.  The SSL PKI has
> a working business model.

we were asked to work with this small client/server startup in menlo
park that wanted to do payment transactions on their server ... and
they had this stuff called SSL
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#asrn2
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#asrn3

in the year we worked with them ... the moved and changed their name.
trivia question ... who had owned the rights to their new name?

as part of the effort on doing the thing called a payment gateway and
allowing servers to do payment transactions ... we also had to perform
business due dilligence on most of these operations that produced
these things called SSL domain name certificates. At the time we
coined the term "certificate manufacturing" ... to differentiate what
most of them were doing from this thing called PKI (aka that don't
actually really have any operational business process for doing much
more than pushing the certificates out the door).

It was also when we coined the term "merchant comfort certificates"
(since it made the relying parties ... aka the consumers ... feel
better).

we also originated the comparision between PKI CRLs and the paper
booklet invalidation model used by the payment card industry in the
60s. when some number of people would comment that it was time to move
payment card transactions into the modern world using digital
certificates ... would pointed out to them ... rather than modernizing
the activity ... it was regressing the operations by 20-30 years.

Another analogy for certificates is the offline payment card world of
the 50s & 60s ... which had to mail out invalid account booklets on a
monthly basis ... and then as the number of merchants, card holders
and risks increased ... they started going to humongous weekly
mailings. At least they had a record of all the relying parties (aka
merchants) ... which typical PKI operation has no idea what-so-ever
who the relying parties are.

It was sometime after we started pointing out that PKIs really had a
business model oriented at offline business environment ... which
would result in regressing many business operations decades if it was
force fit on them ... that you saw OCSP come on the scene.

OCSP doesn't actually validate any information ... it is just there to
validate whether any information that might be in a certificate is
actually still valid. The CRL model is known to not scale ... as found
out in the payment card industry going into the 70s. 

PKIs imply the administration and management of the trust
information. In the offline certificate model ... either they have to
have a list of all possible relying parties and regularly push
invalidation lists out to them ... or they provide an online service
which allows relying parties to check for still valid. However, as you
point out that the PKI administration and management of any kind
doesn't really scale ... which resulted in actual deployments being
simple "certificate manufacturing" (instead of real PKI).

The payment card industry also demonstrated the lack of scaling of the
certificate-like offline model scalling model in the 70s when they
converted to an online model for the actual information.

Part of the problem with the online OCSP model is that has all the
overhead of an online model with all the downside of the offline
implementation aka not providing the relying party access to real
online, timely actual information ... things like timely aggregation
information (current account balance) or timely sequences of events
(saw for fraud detection).

part of the viability for no/low-value market segment is to stick with
simple certificate manufacturing and don't actually try to manage and
administrate the associated information trust.

random past certificate manufacturing posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay2.htm#fed Federal CP model and financial 
transactions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay2.htm#cadis disaster recovery cross-posting
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#votec (my) long winded observations 
regarding X9.59 & XML, encryption and certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm2.htm#scale Scale (and the SRV record)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm2.htm#inetpki A PKI for the Internet (was RE: 
Scale (and the SRV
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm3.htm#kiss7 KISS for PKIX. (Was: RE: ASN.1 vs 
XML (used to be RE: I-D ACTION :draft-ietf-pkix-scvp- 00.txt))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#pkimort2 problem with the death of X.509 
PKI
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#faith faith-based security and kinds of 
trust
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm8.htm#softpki6 Software for PKI
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm8.htm#softpki10 Software for PKI
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm8.htm#softpki14 DNSSEC (RE: Software for PKI)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm8.htm#softpki20 DNSSEC (RE: Software for PKI)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm9.htm#cfppki5 CFP: PKI research workshop
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsmore.htm#client4 Client-side revocation 
checking capability
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay10.htm#81 SSL certs & baby steps
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay10.htm#82 SSL certs & baby steps (addenda)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#34 ALARMED ... Only Mostly Dead ... RIP 
PKI
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#39 ALARMED ... Only Mostly Dead ... RIP 
PKI .. addenda
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#35 How effective is open source crypto? 
(bad form)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#37 How effective is open source crypto?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#19 Payments as an answer to spam 
(addenda)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#37 Keyservers and Spam
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm15.htm#0 invoicing with PKI
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm19.htm#13 What happened with the session 
fixation bug?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#0 Account Authority Digital Signature model
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#40 "Trusted" CA - Oxymoron?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#7 Invalid certificate on 'security' site.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#16 Verisign and Microsoft - oops
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#20 What is PKI?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#2 Root certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#68 PKI/Digital signature doesn't work
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#0 PKI/Digital signature doesn't work
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#8 PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#41 InfiniBand Group Sharply, Evenly 
Divided
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#36 Proposal for a new PKI model (At 
least I hope it's new)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#45 Proposal for a new PKI model (At 
least I hope it's new)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#46 Proposal for a new PKI model (At 
least I hope it's new)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#12 How can I act as a Certificate 
Authority (CA) with openssl ??

random past comfort certificate postings:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm2.htm#mcomfort Human Nature
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm2.htm#mcomf3 Human Nature
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm2.htm#useire2 U.S. & Ireland use digital 
signature
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm3.htm#kiss5 Common misconceptions, was Re: 
KISS for PKIX. (Was: RE: ASN.1 vs XML (used to be RE: I-D ACTION 
:draft-ietf-pkix-scvp- 00.txt))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm3.htm#kiss7 KISS for PKIX. (Was: RE: ASN.1 vs 
XML (used to be RE: I-D ACTION :draft-ietf-pkix-scvp- 00.txt))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsmail.htm#comfort AADS & X9.59 performance and 
algorithm key sizes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay4.htm#comcert Merchant Comfort Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay4.htm#comcert2 Merchant Comfort Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay4.htm#comcert3 Merchant Comfort Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay4.htm#comcert4 Merchant Comfort Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay4.htm#comcert5 Merchant Comfort Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay4.htm#comcert6 Merchant Comfort Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay4.htm#comcert7 Merchant Comfort Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay4.htm#comcert8 Merchant Comfort Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay4.htm#comcert9 Merchant Comfort Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay4.htm#comcert10 Merchant Comfort Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay4.htm#comcert11 Merchant Comfort Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay4.htm#comcert12 Merchant Comfort Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay4.htm#comcert13 Merchant Comfort Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay4.htm#comcert14 Merchant Comfort Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay4.htm#comcert15 Merchant Comfort Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay4.htm#comcert16 Merchant Comfort Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay4.htm#comcert17 Merchant Comfort Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay6.htm#dspki use of digital signatures and PKI
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay10.htm#80 Invisible Ink, E-signatures slow to 
broadly catch on (addenda)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#32 Request for review of "secure" 
storage scheme
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#62 SSL weaknesses
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#43 Proposal for a new PKI model (At 
least I hope it's new)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#39 SSL certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#43 why and how VeriSign, thawte became a 
trusted CA?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004i.html#4 New Method for Authenticated Public 
Key Exchange without Digital Certificates

-- 
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
_______________________________________________
mozilla-crypto mailing list
[email protected]
http://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/mozilla-crypto

Reply via email to