>From what I can tell from Wikipedia [1] it's not possible to authenticate 
>using a symmetric key. When TLS was designed, they must have considered the 
>computation expense of using PKI with public and private keypairs and decided 
>that it was fine, so I think we can trust them.

[1]: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security#Client-authenticated_TLS_handshake

As for revoking certificates, no extension to TLS is required as long as 
there's a method of notifying the server of revocations. With one keypair per 
service, it shouldn't be too hard to push a revocation to the service the 
keypair is linked to that it can add to its list.

I'd really like to avoid making changes to TLS if possible, as then this might 
get complicated.

We could define a scheme for HTTP only (we'd have to pay attention to section 
5.1.2 of draft-ietf-httpbis-p7-auth) then we could do crazier things, but 
working out how to do this at the TLS layer using TLS as it exists means it's 
portable to things like mail clients, FTP clients and clients no one's even 
thought of yet.

Iain.

--
Iain R. Learmonth MBCS
Electronics Research Group
School of Engineering
University of Aberdeen
Kings College
Aberdeen
AB24 3UE

Tel: +44 1224 27 2799

The University of Aberdeen is a charity registered in Scotland No.SCO13683

________________________________________
From: Ted Lemon <[email protected]>
Sent: 16 November 2013 15:21
To: Learmonth, Iain Ross
Subject: Re: [perpass] Stopping password sniffing

On Nov 16, 2013, at 9:31 AM, Learmonth, Iain Ross 
<[email protected]> wrote:
> But can this authentication be performed using TLS as it currently exists? 
> That was my concern.

You're asking the wrong person—I am as innocent as I can manage as to the 
details of TLS.

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