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So Granny huffs and puffs and calls me, trusts my key through the sexy new UI I talked about and is done with it. I specifically said that PGP may not be the s

So Granny huffs and puffs and calls me, trusts my key through the sexy new UI I talked about and is done with it. I specifically said that PGP may not be the solution, but what we have now is just ridiculous if you really think about it. We have no choice but to trust 4 companies on precisely nothing but their word. Even if you mistrust their word - and I do - there is no alternative choice. Security always boils down to trust in the end, and the status quo outsources it. It is the definition of stupid.

rmc 13y ago
You have a choice. Remove all CAs from your browser, and manually verify all the server signatures yourself.
- ivank 13y ago
  I tried this a few years ago in Firefox, but NSS kept throwing all kinds of bizarre errors, as it demanded that various intermediate CAs be trusted.
nemothekid 13y ago
Calls who? Why should Granny trust you? What you described is no different, Granny is still outsourcing her trust to some 3rd party. Or are we working under the assumption that every Granny has a grandson who is just as technically competent as you are? The fact of the matter is, PGP has just enough friction that if implemented correctly, will still lead to the vast majority of non-technical users simply signing up to some SaaS to handle it for them, and with that you end up in square one, where a handful of SaaS providers are the gatekeepers to everyones identity.
higherpurpose 13y ago
FYI, you should take a look at DNSChain: https://github.com/okTurtles/dnschain https://github.com/okTurtles/dnschain
exelius 13y ago
What happens when someone far away from you in the WoT is compromised by say, a botnet? Now you get compromised because a source you verified through your WoT loaded a malware-infested piece of software on your mobile device. So it's not necessarily any more secure. The status quo outsources trust because that's what you do in an economy. We trust the government to secure the value of our money. We trust banks with storing that money, and we trust that the government again will make sure that they do. If you want to see what happens when you DON'T outsource trust, look at how terrorist networks operate. They only deal with trusted associates who know each other personally, they only communicate through trusted couriers, and they live in fucking caves. It's not exactly conducive to a modern economy. You have to outsource some level of trust. Otherwise you waste so much productivity on maintaining and verifying your trust network that you can't actually do anything worthwhile with it. I think the real question is "to whom?" and "for what purposes?" If you need something to be really secure, then you should probably do an in-person key exchange. For the majority of things people do you only need "mostly secure" because there are other protection measures in place in case the communication is fraudulent.
- flopsey 13y ago
  What do terrorist networks and how they live have to do with internet security or even the outsourcing of trust in general? On a technical level there's no meaningful connection. Just talking philosophically they "live in caves" because the US & other govt's have armies trying to kill them. It has nothing to do with trust networks. If anything that style of trust networking has made them more secure as it's difficult to penetrate. The point that OP was making. Finally, personal trust networks have worked remarkably well. Look at guanxi in China, social societies like the Freemasons (not in a "control the world" way, just better business contacts, etc.). These are all based on networks of trust. I have no idea if this is the best way forward for the web but a comparison to terrorist networks is meaningless.
  - politician 13y ago
    The point of the comparison is that the size of networks for which trust is actively maintained are necessarily small due to the expense of maintenance. Indeed, both of your counterexamples have this property. The OP believes that to be economically viable, trust networks must be large. Hence, outsourced trust. But I agree with you: once your personal network grows beyond a certain size, the property connecting you directly to any particular node is no longer exclusively "trust", but will increasingly be "convenience". Usually followed shortly thereafter by "abused by".
joosters 13y ago
And the proposed alternative is to instead trust just one entity, the PGP code? On top of that, it all falls flat if/when any of my trusted friends gets hacked, meaning I start trusting evil.example.com because their hacked key now tells me to?
- XorNot 13y ago
  Everyone always uses this take down and its stupid. Why would you trust your friends keys to validate say, your bank? You wouldn't. You'd trust your government, and various regulatory bodies to do that. You'd trust friend keys to validates your friend's websitss or the like. Different trust paths for different things. This is really the problem with UX on all crypto at the moment though - way too absolutist about 'trust', rather then considering use cases.

rmc 13y ago

You have a choice. Remove all CAs from your browser, and manually verify all the server signatures yourself.

ivank 13y ago
I tried this a few years ago in Firefox, but NSS kept throwing all kinds of bizarre errors, as it demanded that various intermediate CAs be trusted.

nemothekid 13y ago

Calls who? Why should Granny trust you? What you described is no different, Granny is still outsourcing her trust to some 3rd party. Or are we working under the assumption that every Granny has a grandson who is just as technically competent as you are? The fact of the matter is, PGP has just enough friction that if implemented correctly, will still lead to the vast majority of non-technical users simply signing up to some SaaS to handle it for them, and with that you end up in square one, where a handful of SaaS providers are the gatekeepers to everyones identity.

higherpurpose 13y ago

FYI, you should take a look at DNSChain: https://github.com/okTurtles/dnschain https://github.com/okTurtles/dnschain

exelius 13y ago

What happens when someone far away from you in the WoT is compromised by say, a botnet? Now you get compromised because a source you verified through your WoT loaded a malware-infested piece of software on your mobile device. So it's not necessarily any more secure. The status quo outsources trust because that's what you do in an economy. We trust the government to secure the value of our money. We trust banks with storing that money, and we trust that the government again will make sure that they do. If you want to see what happens when you DON'T outsource trust, look at how terrorist networks operate. They only deal with trusted associates who know each other personally, they only communicate through trusted couriers, and they live in fucking caves. It's not exactly conducive to a modern economy. You have to outsource some level of trust. Otherwise you waste so much productivity on maintaining and verifying your trust network that you can't actually do anything worthwhile with it. I think the real question is "to whom?" and "for what purposes?" If you need something to be really secure, then you should probably do an in-person key exchange. For the majority of things people do you only need "mostly secure" because there are other protection measures in place in case the communication is fraudulent.

flopsey 13y ago
What do terrorist networks and how they live have to do with internet security or even the outsourcing of trust in general? On a technical level there's no meaningful connection. Just talking philosophically they "live in caves" because the US & other govt's have armies trying to kill them. It has nothing to do with trust networks. If anything that style of trust networking has made them more secure as it's difficult to penetrate. The point that OP was making. Finally, personal trust networks have worked remarkably well. Look at guanxi in China, social societies like the Freemasons (not in a "control the world" way, just better business contacts, etc.). These are all based on networks of trust. I have no idea if this is the best way forward for the web but a comparison to terrorist networks is meaningless.
- politician 13y ago
  The point of the comparison is that the size of networks for which trust is actively maintained are necessarily small due to the expense of maintenance. Indeed, both of your counterexamples have this property. The OP believes that to be economically viable, trust networks must be large. Hence, outsourced trust. But I agree with you: once your personal network grows beyond a certain size, the property connecting you directly to any particular node is no longer exclusively "trust", but will increasingly be "convenience". Usually followed shortly thereafter by "abused by".

joosters 13y ago

And the proposed alternative is to instead trust just one entity, the PGP code? On top of that, it all falls flat if/when any of my trusted friends gets hacked, meaning I start trusting evil.example.com because their hacked key now tells me to?

XorNot 13y ago
Everyone always uses this take down and its stupid. Why would you trust your friends keys to validate say, your bank? You wouldn't. You'd trust your government, and various regulatory bodies to do that. You'd trust friend keys to validates your friend's websitss or the like. Different trust paths for different things. This is really the problem with UX on all crypto at the moment though - way too absolutist about 'trust', rather then considering use cases.