148 ms·

It's trivially easy when that 'proof of identity' is purely a unique identifier shown to the user, and not actually tied to real-world identity. This is what a

by judge2020 4y ago

It's trivially easy when that 'proof of identity' is purely a unique identifier shown to the user, and not actually tied to real-world identity. This is what a domain name is, ICANN ensures people can't register a domain name if someone already owns it, so with that guarantee, everyone trusts that 'google.com' showing up in their URL bar means that the certificate presented by the server they're connecting to is actually authorized to show 'google.com'.

jcranmer 4y ago
That proof of identity still needs to solve the first problem... you still need to somehow prove that someone who says they're google.com is actually google.com.
- salawat 4y ago
  That's part of why the Root CA certs are A) Long lived and B) why having an untrustworthy root CA is the most calamitous outcome possible. Because the algorithm that yields the answer to your question really only answers the question "Does the cert I was handed cryptographically validate back to a trusted root?" If you can pwn the routing/DNS sufficiently around an AS, you could MITM all the authoritative sources, and with something like TrustCor, willing to issue duplicitous root certs and cert chains, while being trusted by major OS and software package maintainers, you can, in theory, pull the old switcheroo, and the software will still tell you "seems legit, hoss". This is part of why the Internet is architected as a "collective network of networks composed of Trusted Agents". At the end of the day, you're depending on every middle box routing your packet to do the job to get it where it needs to go. The type of Trust you're looking for is incompatible with technologically facilitated networking in a sense. The network cannot prove the trustworthyness of the network. Trust has to start outside it. The trust we've rooted from is from the integrity of the institutions we've established. Something that has been eroded more and more over time as the Internet infrastructure has slowly been civically infiltrated to shape it into a surveillance tool by governments. If you're feeling heartburn over this, the problem isn't the Internet per se. It's your Government, and your institutions, and for places that like to think they are populace driven, the people around you.
- judge2020 4y ago
  But you don't need to prove that. 1. registering google.com requires it being available, and their registry and registrars prohibit registering already-registered domains 2. these registries contain the authoritative DNS records for google.com 3. when anyone wants to pull a certificate for `www.google.com`, they first need to create a DNS TXT entry called "acme-challenge.google.com" (for example) Because of this, you know that whoever 'says' they're Google.com actually is Google.com because of how domain names work and because you see the lock icon in your browser. It's all built on trust of registries and registrars operating diligently, and it's checked by pretty much every big company watching for changes to their domains in case of malicious actions.
  - jcranmer 4y ago
    That's a proof of identity. I think you're fixated on the notion that somehow "identity" can only refer to some kind of legal entity, but "identity" in the WebPKI sense is "control over a domain name"--and WebPKI exists to facilitate communication of proof of that identity.
    - judge2020 4y ago
      Then i'm not sure where the disagreement lies. Domains are an identity and the CA/B ecosystem enforces proof of that.

jcranmer 4y ago

That proof of identity still needs to solve the first problem... you still need to somehow prove that someone who says they're google.com is actually google.com.

salawat 4y ago
That's part of why the Root CA certs are A) Long lived and B) why having an untrustworthy root CA is the most calamitous outcome possible. Because the algorithm that yields the answer to your question really only answers the question "Does the cert I was handed cryptographically validate back to a trusted root?" If you can pwn the routing/DNS sufficiently around an AS, you could MITM all the authoritative sources, and with something like TrustCor, willing to issue duplicitous root certs and cert chains, while being trusted by major OS and software package maintainers, you can, in theory, pull the old switcheroo, and the software will still tell you "seems legit, hoss". This is part of why the Internet is architected as a "collective network of networks composed of Trusted Agents". At the end of the day, you're depending on every middle box routing your packet to do the job to get it where it needs to go. The type of Trust you're looking for is incompatible with technologically facilitated networking in a sense. The network cannot prove the trustworthyness of the network. Trust has to start outside it. The trust we've rooted from is from the integrity of the institutions we've established. Something that has been eroded more and more over time as the Internet infrastructure has slowly been civically infiltrated to shape it into a surveillance tool by governments. If you're feeling heartburn over this, the problem isn't the Internet per se. It's your Government, and your institutions, and for places that like to think they are populace driven, the people around you.
judge2020 4y ago
But you don't need to prove that. 1. registering google.com requires it being available, and their registry and registrars prohibit registering already-registered domains 2. these registries contain the authoritative DNS records for google.com 3. when anyone wants to pull a certificate for `www.google.com`, they first need to create a DNS TXT entry called "acme-challenge.google.com" (for example) Because of this, you know that whoever 'says' they're Google.com actually is Google.com because of how domain names work and because you see the lock icon in your browser. It's all built on trust of registries and registrars operating diligently, and it's checked by pretty much every big company watching for changes to their domains in case of malicious actions.
- jcranmer 4y ago
  That's a proof of identity. I think you're fixated on the notion that somehow "identity" can only refer to some kind of legal entity, but "identity" in the WebPKI sense is "control over a domain name"--and WebPKI exists to facilitate communication of proof of that identity.
  - judge2020 4y ago
    Then i'm not sure where the disagreement lies. Domains are an identity and the CA/B ecosystem enforces proof of that.