[Cryptography] Opening Discussion: Speculation on "BULLRUN"

Gregory Perry Gregory.Perry at govirtual.tv
Sat Sep 7 17:14:47 EDT 2013


On 09/07/2013 05:03 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:

Good theory only the CA industry tried very hard to deploy and was prevented from doing so because Randy Bush abused his position as DNSEXT chair to prevent modification of the spec to meet the deployment requirements in .com.

DNSSEC would have deployed in 2003 with the DNS ATLAS upgrade had the IETF followed the clear consensus of the DNSEXT working group and approved the OPT-IN proposal. The code was written and ready to deploy.

I told the IESG and the IAB that the VeriSign position was no bluff and that if OPT-IN did not get approved there would be no deployment in .com. A business is not going to spend $100million on deployment of a feature that has no proven market demand when the same job can be done for $5 million with only minor changes.

And this is exactly why there is no real security on the Internet.  Because the IETF and standards committees and working groups are all in reality political fiefdoms and technological monopolies aimed at lining the pockets of a select few companies deemed "worthy" of authenticating user documentation for purposes of establishing online credibility.

There is no reason for any of this, and I would once again cite to Bitcoin as an example of how an entire secure online currency standard can be created and maintained in a decentralized fashion without the need for complex hierarchies of quasi-political commercial interests.

Encrypting SMTP is trivial, it's all about the standard to make it happen.  Encrypting IPv6 was initially a mandatory part of the spec, but then it somehow became discretionary.  The nuts and bolts of strong crypto have been around for decades, but the IETF and related standards "powers to be" are more interested in creating a global police state than guaranteeing some semblance of confidential and privacy for Internet users.
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