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Several questions, some minor, some major: AIUI, the keyserver is centralized in two regards: a) if it's down, I can't access anyone's data and b) it centraliz
by Merovius 10y ago
Several questions, some minor, some major:
AIUI, the keyserver is centralized in two regards: a) if it's down, I can't access anyone's data and b) it centralizes trust, key.upspin.io has complete control over which key belongs to which person and where the data is, so it can just take over accounts. Why not use a federated model, e.g. putting the directory into the DNS or have the directory server listen on a well-defined port or something? Or, if you want the usability of not having the E-Mail hoster necessarily deal with upspin, do the federated thing first and if that fails, fall back to the centralized keyserver?
There seems to be a 1:1 mapping of usernames to keys, meaning I have to share my private key with all my devices. If one device gets lost or compromised, I now have to revoke my key and rotate it on all devices. Why not putting in a 1:n mapping of usernames to keys, so that each device gets its own key?
Why store the upspin-specific keys in ~/.ssh? I won't use them to ssh anywhere and there already is a perfectly fine directory ~/upspin for upspin-related data.
The way sharing works means, that storage for a file grows linearly with users that a file is shared with. This would seem to preclude from sharing files with large non-public audiences (say, I have a group for all employees of my company, or members of my hackerspace, or attendees of a conference…).
- stefanha 10y agoThe centralized keyserver puzzles me a little too but it does have some advantages: 1. The email address adds a layer of indirection on top of your upspin directory and storage server addresses. You can migrate upspin providers without changing your identifier in the global namespace. 2. The email address is instantly recognizable to friends and family. It's more user-friendly than introducing a separate decentralized upspin address (like Jabber IDs). You did mention a hybrid approach which uses the centralized keyserver as a fallback though. A decentralized keyserver still seems more natural to me. Would be great to hear more on the reasoning from the creators of upspin.
- yagurastation 10y ago"An Upspin user joins the system by publishing a key to a central key server. We’re running our own server for the moment but anticipate converting to Key Transparency." https://upspin.io/doc/security.md https://upspin.io/doc/security.md