[Cryptography] Certificates and PKI

Ben Laurie ben at links.org
Tue Dec 23 12:49:40 EST 2014


On 23 December 2014 at 16:16, Nico Williams <nico at cryptonector.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 11:22:43AM +0000, Ben Laurie wrote:
>> On 23 December 2014 at 03:38, Nico Williams <nico at cryptonector.com> wrote:
>> > Then there's naming.  x.500 naming is just. such. a. disaster.
>> >
>> > People -perhaps every literate human with an Internet connection- are
>> > conversant with domainnames.
>>
>> That is patently untrue - if they were, phishing would be a whole lot
>> harder than it is.
>
> That's a different problem that PKIX naming is also susceptible to
> (probably any naming scheme where "labels" of any sort are used would
> be).

Sure, but that does not alter the point that most people do not
understand DNS, PKIX naming, or any other naming scheme we use.

>> > If you look at it this way, which horse has a better chance of winning?
>>
>> I'm not sure which horses we are talking about? Or what they might win?
>
> DNSSEC/DANE has a simpler last mile problem than the problems that
> plague PKIX as-deployed in the WebPKI.  The future is DNSSEC's.

Is this like the future being IPv6's? :-)

The last mile problem is sufficiently problematic currently that we
cannot realistically rely on DNSSEC (i.e. we would effectively
disenfranchise a significant fraction of users). Obviously this is not
ideal, but its where we are.


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