[SSL Observatory] certificates for .local names [was: Re: DFN and subordinate CA domain-scoped whitelists]

[Phillip Hallam-Baker]

Just to re-iterate,

CAs stand willing ready and able to help here. But a big part of the reason
that we have issues here is that the lines of responsibility are not clear.

It is like when you have two parents who both think the other is watching
the child. That is when problems arise.


We need to clarify these lines of responsibility because we have at least
two further cryptographic algorithm turnovers that will have to happen in
the near future (after which the issue should only really arise if there is
a major defect in one of the algorithms.). These are the
RSA1024 turnover and the SHA-1 turnover.

Who has the speaking stick for those probably matters much less than that
everyone knows who has it and they have at least some coercive power.


On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 7:50 PM, Ben Wilson <ben at digicert.com> wrote:

> I have to agree with Phillip.  Many application developers don't know how
> to
> properly integrate PKI into their systems.  For instance, some email system
> providers still don't know what S/MIME is.  Some applications ignore Policy
> OID processing or simply skip revocation checking or chain processing or
> whatever.  Gate keeping is best performed by a programmable system that can
> determine whether the signed blob is appropriate for its intended purpose.
> But I'm not defending all CAs either.  I've seen many examples of strange
> blobs being passed off as certificates, but relying party systems need to
> be
> able to reject these if they don't satisfy the criteria needed for
> trustworthy processing.
>
> On 11/10/2011 12:14 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
>
> >See above. The primary responsibility for making sure
> >the crypto is strong enough has to fall on the
> >application provider.
>
> >The CAs should provide a backup but this does not
> >absolve the application designer from making the right
> >choice.
>
> >What I am objecting to here is that this exercise
> >seems to only ever be interested in holding CAs
> >accountable.
>
>


-- 
Website: http://hallambaker.com/
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