Re: [cryptography] this house believes that user's control over the root list is a placebo

2011-06-27 Thread Ian G
On 26/06/11 1:26 PM, Marsh Ray wrote: On 06/25/2011 03:48 PM, Ian G wrote: On 21/06/11 4:15 PM, Marsh Ray wrote: This was about the CNNIC situation, Ah, the I'm not in control of my own root list threat scenario. See, the thing there is that CNNIC has a dirty reputation. That's part of

Re: [cryptography] this house believes that user's control over the root list is a placebo

2011-06-27 Thread Arshad Noor
On 06/26/2011 02:50 AM, Ralph Holz wrote: Which brings us to the next point: how do we measure improvement? What we would need - and don't have, and likely won't have for another long while - are numbers that are statistically meaningful. On moz.dev.sec.policy, the proposal is out that CAs

Re: [cryptography] this house believes that user's control over the root list is a placebo

2011-06-27 Thread Kevin W. Wall
On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 8:59 PM, Arshad Noor arshad.n...@strongauth.com wrote: In 2008, I sent the following e-mail to my representatives and both Presidential candidates: http://seclists.org/dataloss/2008/q3/133 Its intent was to initiate a change in policy wrt breach disclosures. There

Re: [cryptography] this house believes that user's control over the root list is a placebo

2011-06-26 Thread Ralph Holz
Hi, Any model that offers a security feature to a trivially tiny minority, to the expense of the dominant majority, is daft. The logical conclusion of 1.5 decades worth of experience with centralised root lists is that we, in the aggregate, may as well trust Microsoft and the other root

Re: [cryptography] this house believes that user's control over the root list is a placebo

2011-06-26 Thread James A. Donald
On 2011-06-26 7:50 PM, Ralph Holz wrote: On moz.dev.sec.policy, the proposal is out that CAs need to publicly disclose security incidents and breaches. This could actually be a good step forward. If the numbers show that incidents are far more frequent than generally assumed, this would get us

Re: [cryptography] this house believes that user's control over the root list is a placebo

2011-06-26 Thread Ralph Holz
Hi, The most common security breach is probably that a government or powerful private group launches a man in the middle attack. Are CAs going to report that? Seems unlikely. The key word in your sentence is probably. Just how much is that? I'm not saying I'm not with you in the general

Re: [cryptography] this house believes that user's control over the root list is a placebo

2011-06-26 Thread Marsh Ray
On 06/25/2011 03:48 PM, Ian G wrote: On 21/06/11 4:15 PM, Marsh Ray wrote: This was about the CNNIC situation, Ah, the I'm not in control of my own root list threat scenario. See, the thing there is that CNNIC has a dirty reputation. That's part of it. But there are some deeper issues.

Re: [cryptography] this house believes that user's control over the root list is a placebo

2011-06-26 Thread Jonathan Thornburg
On Sun, 26 Jun 2011, Marsh Ray wrote: How about these questions: When is a centralized root list necessary and when can it be avoided? How can the quality of root CAs be improved? How can the number of root CAs be reduced in general? How can the number of root CAs be reduced in specific

Re: [cryptography] this house believes that user's control over the root list is a placebo

2011-06-26 Thread The Fungi
On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 12:26:40PM -0500, Marsh Ray wrote: [...] Now maybe it's different for ISP core router admins, but the existence of this product strongly implies that at least some admins are connecting to their router with their web browser over HTTPS and typing in the same password

Re: [cryptography] this house believes that user's control over the root list is a placebo

2011-06-26 Thread Marsh Ray
On 06/26/2011 01:13 PM, The Fungi wrote: On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 12:26:40PM -0500, Marsh Ray wrote: [...] Now maybe it's different for ISP core router admins, but the existence of this product strongly implies that at least some admins are connecting to their router with their web browser over

Re: [cryptography] this house believes that user's control over the root list is a placebo

2011-06-26 Thread Ian G
On 26/06/11 5:50 AM, Ralph Holz wrote: Hi, Any model that offers a security feature to a trivially tiny minority, to the expense of the dominant majority, is daft. The logical conclusion of 1.5 decades worth of experience with centralised root lists is that we, in the aggregate, may as well

Re: [cryptography] this house believes that user's control over the root list is a placebo

2011-06-26 Thread Marsh Ray
On 06/26/2011 05:58 PM, Ian G wrote: On 26/06/11 5:50 AM, Ralph Holz wrote: - you don't want to hurt the CAs too badly if you are a vendor Vendors spend all day long talking internally and with other vendors. Consequently, they tend to forget who holds the real money. For most healthy

[cryptography] this house believes that user's control over the root list is a placebo

2011-06-25 Thread Ian G
On 21/06/11 4:15 PM, Marsh Ray wrote: On 06/21/2011 12:18 PM, Ian G wrote: On 18/06/11 8:16 PM, Marsh Ray wrote: On 06/18/2011 03:08 PM, slinky wrote: But we know there are still hundreds of trusted root CAs, many from governments, that will silently install themselves into Windows at