On 10/16/2003 07:19 PM, David Honig wrote: > > it would make sense for the original vendor website (eg Palm) > to have signed the "MITM" site's cert (palmorder.modusmedia.com), > not for Verisign to do so. Even better, for Mastercard to have signed > both Palm and palmorder.modusmedia.com as well. And Mastercard to > have printed its key's signature in my monthly paper bill.
Bravo. Those are golden words.
Let me add my few coppers:
1) This makes contact with a previous thread wherein the point was made that people often unwisely talk about identities when they should be talking about credentials aka capabilities.
I really don't care about the identity of the order-taking agent (e.g. palmorder.modusmedia.com). What I want to do is establish the *credentials* of this *session*. I want a session with the certified capability to bind palm.com to a contract, and the certified capability to handle my credit-card details properly.
2) We see that threat models (as mentioned in the Subject: line of this thread), while an absolutely vital part of the story, are not the whole story. One always needs a push-pull approach, documenting the good things that are supposed to happen *and* the bad things that are supposed to not happen (i.e. threats).
3) To the extent that SSL focuses on IDs rather than capabilities, IMHO the underlying model has room for improvement.
4a) This raises some user-interface issues. The typical user is not a world-class cryptographer and may not have a clear idea just what ensemble of credentials a given session ought to have. This is not a criticism of credentials; the user doesn't know what ID the session ought to have under the current system, as illustrated by the Palm example. The point is that if we want something better than what we have now, we have a lot of work to do.
4b) As a half-baked thought: One informal intuitive notion that users have is that if a session displays the MasterCard *logo* it must be authorized by MasterCard. This notion is enforceable by law in the long run. Can we make it enforceable cryptographically in real time? Perhaps the CAs should pay attention not so much to signing domain names (with some supposed responsibility to refrain from signing abusively misspelled names e.g. pa1m.com) but rather more to signing logos (with some responsibility to not sign bogus ones). Then the browser (or other user interface) should to verify -- automatically -- that a session that wishes to display certain logos can prove that it is authorized to do so. If the logos check out, they should be displayed in some distinctive way so that a cheap facsimile of a logo won't be mistaken for a cryptologically verified logo.
Even if you don't like my half-baked proposal (4b) I hope we can all agree that the current ID-based system has room for improvement.
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Tangentially-related point about credentials:
In a previous thread the point was made that anonymous or pseudonymous credentials can only say positive things. That is, I cannot discredit you by giving you a discredential. You'll just throw it away. If I somehow discredit your pseudonym, you'll just choose another and start over.
This problem can be alleviated to some extent if you can post a fiduciary bond. Then if you do something bad, I can demand compensation from the agency that issued your bond. If this happens a lot, they may revoke your bond. That is, you can be discredited by losing a credential.
This means I can do business with you without knowing your name or how to find you. I just need to trust the agency that issued your bond. The agency presumably needs to know a lot about you, but I don't.
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