307 digit number factored

[John Levine]

>somewhere over the yrs the term "certification authority" was truncated
>to "certificate authority" ... along with some impression that 
>certificates are being sold (as opposed to certification processes).

When I pay $14.95 for a certificate, with the investigation of my bona
fides limited to clicking through a link in an e-mail, and answering
the phone*, entering a short code, and responding to a request to
state your name**, it sure seems to me like I'm buying a certificate.
The only reason I do it is that for that price it's cheaper than
explaining to people why the threat that web certs defend against is
stupid.

> getting totally rid of the need for domain name certificates ... DNS
> serving up both ip-addresses and public keys in single operation.

DKIM does that, you can get the MX and verification key for a domain.
But I wouldn't say that was a security improvement except insofar as
it makes the process easy enough that people are more likely to use it
than they are the more cumbersome systems like S/MIME.

R's,
John

* - any old phone, I've had them call random VoIP numbers in other
continents that I was experimenting with

** - so of course I say "your name".

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