This is a brief outline on the architecture of an independent/central "verification" program. This could be part of a keyring, or a contact manager, or even a combined contacts/keys manager that some UX folks were suggesting at the CTS IV. It would let a user:
1. store cryptographic material to authenticate their contact, either a public-key fpr, or a shared secret for kex, or whatever. 2. store/set the *verification status* of the material. this could be: - full (physical), i.e. via a physical communication of fingerprint or shared-secret - delegate, i.e. sent via a friend (the friend must themselves be verified). (one idea for mpOTR/groupchat is to have the initiator send all public keys to everyone else.) - saw-multiple, i.e. saw the contact use/communicate the key via these insecure but independent channels/mediums (e.g. via email, phone, IM from several accounts) 3. read some subjective comment/advice about how "safe" the current situation is 4. set the *overall policy* for letting other applications treat a contact as "valid". e.g. require-full, require-friend-trust, allow-but-warn-if-new (i.e. a form of TOFU) 5. perform physical verification via technical means, such as scanning a QR code 6. sync this state to other trusted devices The point being that identity/key verification is a logistics and usability issue, and not really a cryptographic issue. It is semi-relevant to the other thread - we want to support not only fpr verification, but other methods of verification too, including "soft" verification (inc. the effortless TOFU) that is easier but not secure against Nation-State-Adversaries. Advantages: - user can set strict/loose verification policy based on their own preference, in one single place, that affects all applications - saves application writers from having to think about these issues - unified UI for verification - synced between different devices. most crypto-application writers will not bother with this, it is too hard and a separate concern from their program. Disadvantages: - the component's verification-status data-model may not cover everything that a certain application needs. this can be fixed with time, however, and it will eventually benefit all applications, not just a single one. - most developers of contact managers aren't security-trained. you would hope that developers of keyrings are a bit better, but we still see things like http://gaganpreet.in/blog/2013/07/24/kwallet-security-analysis/ mistaking EBC for CBC Thoughts? X -- GPG: 4096R/1318EFAC5FBBDBCE git://github.com/infinity0/pubkeys.git
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