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Unfortunately SSL's PKI is a fundamental part of how people use it. That said, I would agree with you if you were to say that there's nothing fundamentally wro
by djcapelis 15y ago
Unfortunately SSL's PKI is a fundamental part of how people use it. That said, I would agree with you if you were to say that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the TLS protocol spec itself, aside from it being probably a bit more complex than we really really need.
- tptacek 15y agoThe browser PKI is not a fundamental part of how SSL/TLS is used in non-browser applications. For instance, enterprise software that uses TLS routinely rely on static access lists (for instance, of digests of self-signed certificates) to authenticate connections. The reason browsers have the crazy PKI model is that browser SSL/TLS has to scale to the entire Internet and allow new sites to come online with only days or hours or minutes of advanced warning.
- djcapelis 15y agoOh sure. I've written software that does exactly that. I also tend to write my stuff to use TOFU when it's TLS outside of the mess that's the web. But you have to admit the general default for SSL is the PKI implemented in web browsers. Even too often in non-web applications, unfortunately.