"Anders Rundgren" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> In fact they sometimes do but here you have to hold your horses;
> this certificate has nothing to do with CCs, it is a login/signature
> solution for the customer to the bank.  This PKI is typically
> in-house while the 3D secure is CC-branded as otherwise merchants
> would not recognize CC-branded banks.

so the consumer doesn't need a PKI public key when they are dealing
with their own bank ... they could just record a certificateless
public key 
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#certless

for their financial institution in their trusted public key store.
this also would eliminate many of the bank site spoofing
vulnerabilities ... recent discussion
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#19

in the above ... it discusses various kinds of spoofing and
MITM-attacks ... where the end user is provided with a URL ... rather
than entering it themselves. Then you have an exploit of SSL ...
which is only verifying the domain name in the entered URL against the
domain name in the supplied certificate. If you aren't entering the
URL ... but it is being provided by an attacker ... then they are
likely to provide a URL that corresponds to a certificate that they
have valid rights for. This has been a long recognized characteristic.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#sslcert

A consumer, having vetted a bank's public key for storing in their own
trusted public key repository ... then can use that vetted public key
for future communication with their financial institution ...  and not
be subject to vulernabilities and exploits of an externally provided
(certificate-based) public key that has had no vetting ..  other than
it is a valid public key and belongs to somebody.

The purpose for PKI has been for allowing relying parties to establish
some level of trust when dealing with first-time encounters with
entities that are otherwise complete strangers ... and the relying
party has no other recourse for accessing information to establish
trust. The design point was somewhat from the early 80s when there was
much lower level of online connectivity and relying parties frequently
operated in offline environment.

With the ubiquitous proliferation of the internet, those offline
pockets are being drastically reduced.  Somewhat as a result, some
PKIs have attempted to move into the no-value market segment ... where
a relying party is online ... but the value of the operation doesn't
justify performing a online transactions. The issue user is that as
the internet becomes much more pervasive ... the cost of online
internet operations are radically dropping ... which in turn is
drastically reducing the no-value situations that can't justify an
online operation.

Presumably in the 3d secure PKI scenario, it has a financial
institution's CC-specific certificate that is targeted specifically at
relying parties that have had no prior dealings with that financial
institution(*?*).

Presumably this implies the merchant as a relying party in dealing
with the consumer's financial institution (the other alternative is
possibly the consumer as a relying party in dealing with the
merchant's financial institution ... but I have seen nothing that
seems to support that scenario). Now, going back to well before the
rise of PKI to address the offline trust scenario ...  the payment
card industry had online transactions that went from the merchant
through a federated infrastructure all the way to the consumer's
financial instititon and back as straight through processing. This
included contractual trust establishment with various kinds of
obligations and liabilities ... that included the consumer's financial
institution assuming certain liabilities on behalf of the consumer and
the merchant's financial institution assuming certain liabilities on
behalf of the merchant. Possibly because of these obligations ... both
financial institutions have interest in the transaction passing
through them.

As mentioned before ... it appears that 3d secure doesn't eliminate
the existing online real-time transaction that conforms to some
significant contractual and liability obligations. 3d secure appears
to add an additional, 2nd online transaction ... allowing the merchant
to be directly in communication with the consumer's financial
institution (bypassing the established contractual and liability
obligations involving the merchant's financial institution). Furthermore, 
this 3d secure appears to include a PKI certificate ... targeted at
establishing trust where the relying party has no other recourse for
trust establishment. However, the merchant is already covered under
the contractual trust operations that have been standard business
practice for decades.

So what possible motivation is there for a merchant to add additional
overhead and processing(*?*).

-- 
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
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