A mighty fortress is our PKI, Part II

[Perry E. Metzger]

On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 14:40:14 -0600 Paul Tiemann
<paul.tiemann.usenet at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Jul 28, 2010, at 11:25 AM, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:20:52 -0500 Nicolas Williams
> > <Nicolas.Williams at oracle.com> wrote:
> >> On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 12:18:56PM -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> >>> Again, I understand that in a technological sense, in an ideal
> >>> world, they would be equivalent. However, the big difference,
> >>> again, is that you can't run Kerberos with no KDC, but you can
> >>> run a PKI without an OCSP server. The KDC is impossible to leave
> >>> out of the system. That is a really nice technological feature.
> >> 
> >> Whether PKI can run w/o OCSP is up to the relying parties.
> >> Today, because OCSP is an afterthought, they have little choice.
> > 
> > My mother relies on many certificates. Can she make a decision on
> > whether or not her browser uses OCSP for all its transactions?
> 
> That might depend.  I tell Firefox to use OCSP if a responder is
> referenced in the certificate, and I check that little checkbox
> that says "When an OCSP connection fails, treat the certificate as
> invalid."

I believe you've missed an important point.

First, my mother would never understand what that box means. Second,
my mother has no control over whether the CA provides OCSP.

Perry
-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry at piermont.com

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