Rich Salz wrote:
> An interesting question. Should it be PGP-signed? Well, since it's an
> X.509-based system, that wouldn't look great.
Hmmm, but I don't think it would look bad. PGP and X.509 are very different
trust models; web-of-trust vs X.500-directory/hierarchical. Both
are useful in different circumstances.
For example, I "trust" my mod_ssl because:
* It was PGP-signed by Ralf Engelschall
* Ralf's PGP public key (& fingerprint) is served from
https://www.engelschall.com/ho/rse/
* The X.509 site cert for www.engelschall.com is signed by
Thawte Server CA.
* The Thawte Server CA Cert:
(i). Is in my browser (downloaded from https URL).
(ii). Is in my hard copy of Ross Anderson, et al _The Global Internet
Trust Register_ (ISBN 0-262-51105-3).
(iii). Fingerprints in (i) & (ii) match. FYI:
C5:70:C4:A2:ED:53:78:0C:C8:10:53:81:64:CB:D0:1D
This mixture of PGP/X.509 together makes for reasonable ad hoc verification,
so I think there should be no shame for OpenSSL to provide a PGP sig.
Yes, there is always a kind of chicken-vs-egg philosophical question which
prevents 100% trust, but I try to go through some sort of verification on a
piece of open source software which has security implications. Don't you?
(Ok, I don't *always* do this, but when I can do it, I feel better :-).
> And if it's signed with an X.509 cert, you can only verify with an outside
> source, and how many folks have convenient access to software that can do
> that?
Most people have a web browser capable of SSL. Under an SSL download
paradigm, confidentiality and integrity go together, because I think
that cheapest attack against integrity is to break the symmetric
cryptography -- and *that* is considered difficult.
Sincerely,
John
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