[Cryptography] HSM's

[Peter Todd]

On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 07:43:19PM +0300, ianG wrote:
> At CAcert I more or less decided I could not trust the HSMs, as
> essentially they were unauditable.  I don't see that has changed, and
> what I've heard of other CA practices is that they basically wing it in
> this direction.  I guess some Auditors just nod off as soon as they hear
> that an approved (?) HSM is used without even checking the circumstances
> of the procurement and usage.
> 
> So we stuck with the "home grown" HSM concept which was to build a
> machine, and lock it down in the secure rack.  This has the risk that
> someone can sneak in and steal the root by opening it up.  My call was
> that as the CA had covered pretty much all the other risk better, this
> was an acceptable risk.  But in the future they should work to reduce
> this one as well.

And this is why we need n-of-m multiple key support in OpenPGP: I don't
really trust your home-grown HSM, or the professional one, but the
chance of both being backdoored is low.

-- 
'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
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