On Jan 27, 2012, at 1:02 PM, Kyle Hamilton wrote:
> * PGP - S/MIME Signed by an unverified key: 01/27/2012 at 01:02:24 PM
>
> All,
>
> Why are we focusing on 'the' anything?
>
> Key pinning and CA pinning don't work with only One True Key. The only
> usable way to do that kind of thing is to present multiple options. As
> certificate chains expire or are discovered to be revoked, those keys would
> be removed from the list of acceptable keys.
>
> We have multiple data paths to the user, and everything that isn't
> security-related in IETF is recommended as highly redundant. Why is the
> security area different, where everything is so singular and brittle?
>
> We should be providing multiple TXT records with hashes of multiple
> acceptable SPKIs, and cross-referencing them with the SPKIs we receive in the
> TLS handshake. We should not, however, rely on this as 'the' way to get
> information around. That information should be advisory unless no
> certificate chain is presented by the server. (i.e., you can be advised that
> you should look for certain keys, and you can also be willing to trust a
> certifier. These are not mutually exclusive.)
>
> We do indeed need certification, and certification does provide a useful
> service. It just doesn't do it right now. The problem is the way it's
> implemented, preventing it from being useful. Implementors don't want to
> spend the time and make the changes to make it more useful, or are too
> stubbornly attached to an unworkable model to realize that they need to
> change.
>
> We should also provide more than one certificate chain in our handshakes.
> This would permit maintenance of the certificates on the webservers to be
> moved to a scheduled maintenance window instead of "OMG our CA is about to be
> delisted we have to act NOW". It would also permit different certificate
> chains to be presented for different applications without having to define a
> new TLS extension.
>
> Why is everything so single-point-of-failure in the Security working area?
> Does it really have to be?
Bravo. +2^{n-1}
Jon
_______________________________________________
therightkey mailing list
[email protected]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/therightkey
