On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 1:06 PM, Ted Lemon <[email protected]> wrote: > On Nov 13, 2013, at 11:30 AM, Learmonth, Iain Ross < > [email protected]> wrote: > > How would this key server work? Looking at X.509 key servers, they only > ever seem to store the public key, which the website would already have > anyway. I know with gpg-agent you can forward that to remote servers, but > I've never seen anyone pulling it from somewhere. > > The key server would have a collection of public/private key pairs. When > you establish an account at a new site, your browser contacts the server > and asks it to generate a new master key pair for the site. The browser > generates a per-site key pair and sends the public half to the server; the > server hands back a cert signing that key with the new per-site master key > it generated. Your other devices are notified asynchronously of the new > relationship, and generate their own keys, which are signed with the same > per-site master key. No secret key ever crosses the network.
That is essentially the CardSpace model but taking account of roaming needs. My view is that either you should use one public keypair per device or if the authentication keys are going to be per site then you should use a strong (non user chosen) symmetric key and a proof of possession scheme. There is really no value to a public key scheme for authentication if there are only two parties to the conversation and no need for non repudiation. -- Website: http://hallambaker.com/
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