CFP: PKI research workshop
D. A. Honig
dahonig at home.com
Tue Jan 15 13:48:30 EST 2002
>[The
>question isn't some sort of mystification of identity -- it is being
>able to know that you're talking to the same "Dear Abby" your friends
>have talked to and that you talked to last week.
Here you're talking about "reputation of nyms", which doesn't require
third parties or certs, just well-kept secret keys of a PK pair.
If the remote entity keeps using the same PK keys, you can reasonably
update reputation
based on that alone. (They're essentially signing their behaviors.)
[Moderator's note: I fully agree. I was disputing only the notion that
unauthenticated connections were sufficient. Authentication does not
require certificates or third parties -- see the way SSH handles keys
for example. --Perry]
>Now that MIM attacks
>have been automated they don't even need sophistication to conduct. --Perry]
Since a signed cert is useful for recovering ZERO dollars from the signer,
if you've been defrauded by some entity, the end result is the same if a MIM
defrauds you.
A *trusted* signer would solve the confidentiality loss problem but not the
financial
liability problem. But given that signers will sign *anything* (and why
not, they have no
financial liability and little useful reputation to lose) this is a small
difference.
dh
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