4 ms·

I would much rather trust a handful of multinational corporations than a group of "local geeks" to tell me which keys I should trust. Why? 1) It is probably e

by kijin 13y ago

I would much rather trust a handful of multinational corporations than a group of "local geeks" to tell me which keys I should trust. Why? 1) It is probably easier for casual attackers to trick a local geek to trust a phony key. Determined attackers and state-level actors can probably compromise CAs as well, but most day-to-day threats are of the casual type. 2) When a local geek accidentally trusts a phony key, and other people realize it and point it out to them, all that happens is "Oops, I'm sorry." When Comodo is caught issuing phony certificates, there will be a Silicon Valley-wide uproar, browser vendors will very quickly invalidate the offending intermediate key, and the incident will hurt Comodo's bottom line for many years afterward. In other words, Comodo is more accountable than any private individual, not because it's any more ethical, nor because it is any more competent, but simply because it is a highly visible target of public scrutiny whose very survival depends on its public image as a trustworthy CA. 3) Most people (including but not limited to grandmas) who are just beginning to use the Internet have no way to know which keys to trust. We in the programmer community are an exception, not the rule. So what's actually going to happen is that browsers will trust, by default, a bunch of highly reputable individuals or groups (perhaps the browser vendors themselves) and advise the user to trust whomever these people trust. That's not really different from the current situation with CAs. We just replace Verisign and Comodo with @cperciva and @tptacek.

atmosx 13y ago
> It is probably easier for casual attackers to trick a local geek to trust a phony key. Determined attackers and state-level actors can probably compromise CAs as well, but most day-to-day threats are of the casual type. Not true, see here: http://privacy-pc.com/articles/ssl-and-the-future-of-authenticity-comodo-hack-and-secure-protocol-components.html http://privacy-pc.com/articles/ssl-and-the-future-of-authent... Problems here is that free market model doesn't work once you're a big player. Instead of Comodo being bashed by MS/GOOG/Moz it's sill there all shiny and bright serving SSLs. So the current model is flawed and can be exploited by technically unskilled users, but worst than that, it doesn't seem to care about it's failures.
TeMPOraL 13y ago
I strongly disagree with your point 2). The reality is, if Comodo is caught issuing phony certificates, there's some media shitstorm that never actually changes anything, stocks go up and down a bit, and few days later nobody ever remembers any it or cares about it, and the company continues doing it's business as usual (don't believe me? then why GoDaddy still exists?). On the other hand, we have social mechanisms for dealing with mistrust in place since forever. If you are caught untrustworthy once about something, you'll probably never be trusted again on that issue. People know how to deal with those situations effectively between themselves. It's also easier to boycott an untrustworthy peer than a multinational corporation. You have many friends to choose from, but there is usually no other company to go to for a comparable service.
- kijin 13y ago
  > we have social mechanisms for dealing with mistrust in place since forever ... People know how to deal with those situations effectively between themselves. As some of the other commenters have mentioned, the problem seems to be that these social mechanisms don't scale. Please take my point 2) in combination with point 3). As I said, techies are the exception, not the rule. It's not just Grandma who will have trouble with a web of trust, it's pretty much everyone except us. How do they even know which peers to distrust? Will there be a news feed about compromised peers? Will everyone have to subscribe to one? What if someone wants to explore a part of the web that none of their peers, or their peers' peers, have ever heard about? The single most important advantage of a centralized model of trust is that a list of trustworthy vs. untrustworthy parties can be quickly and widely distributed in an automated fashion. Comodo issues phony certs? 12 hours later, every copy of Firefox receives an updated list of revoked keys. I know it doesn't currently work like that, but it's entirely possible. Whereas with a web of trust, millions of people will be left trusting compromised peers for many months afterward because they didn't get the news.

by kijin 13y ago

atmosx 13y ago

> It is probably easier for casual attackers to trick a local geek to trust a phony key. Determined attackers and state-level actors can probably compromise CAs as well, but most day-to-day threats are of the casual type. Not true, see here: http://privacy-pc.com/articles/ssl-and-the-future-of-authenticity-comodo-hack-and-secure-protocol-components.html http://privacy-pc.com/articles/ssl-and-the-future-of-authent... Problems here is that free market model doesn't work once you're a big player. Instead of Comodo being bashed by MS/GOOG/Moz it's sill there all shiny and bright serving SSLs. So the current model is flawed and can be exploited by technically unskilled users, but worst than that, it doesn't seem to care about it's failures.

TeMPOraL 13y ago

I strongly disagree with your point 2). The reality is, if Comodo is caught issuing phony certificates, there's some media shitstorm that never actually changes anything, stocks go up and down a bit, and few days later nobody ever remembers any it or cares about it, and the company continues doing it's business as usual (don't believe me? then why GoDaddy still exists?). On the other hand, we have social mechanisms for dealing with mistrust in place since forever. If you are caught untrustworthy once about something, you'll probably never be trusted again on that issue. People know how to deal with those situations effectively between themselves. It's also easier to boycott an untrustworthy peer than a multinational corporation. You have many friends to choose from, but there is usually no other company to go to for a comparable service.

kijin 13y ago
> we have social mechanisms for dealing with mistrust in place since forever ... People know how to deal with those situations effectively between themselves. As some of the other commenters have mentioned, the problem seems to be that these social mechanisms don't scale. Please take my point 2) in combination with point 3). As I said, techies are the exception, not the rule. It's not just Grandma who will have trouble with a web of trust, it's pretty much everyone except us. How do they even know which peers to distrust? Will there be a news feed about compromised peers? Will everyone have to subscribe to one? What if someone wants to explore a part of the web that none of their peers, or their peers' peers, have ever heard about? The single most important advantage of a centralized model of trust is that a list of trustworthy vs. untrustworthy parties can be quickly and widely distributed in an automated fashion. Comodo issues phony certs? 12 hours later, every copy of Firefox receives an updated list of revoked keys. I know it doesn't currently work like that, but it's entirely possible. Whereas with a web of trust, millions of people will be left trusting compromised peers for many months afterward because they didn't get the news.