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Again though this argument rests in people choosing to behave a certain way: CAs will choose not to go rogue because browser vendors will choose to be outraged

Again though this argument rests in people choosing to behave a certain way: CAs will choose not to go rogue because browser vendors will choose to be outraged by it. If one was to attempt to formally specify X.509 in terms of math or logic we'd get to this part and have no choice but to write "the security of this portion is because we say so". How many times must we be betrayed before this isn't good enough?

weavejester 13y ago
Security is always going to involve trust. Even putting aside root certificates, you'd still have to trust your browser and your operating system. That's not to say there aren't better mechanisms for verifying trust, but you'll never eliminate it entirely. There's always going to be some assumption, such as "the central authorities are trustworthy" in the case of SSL, or "the majority of nodes are trustworthy" in the case of Tor, or "the CPU majority is trustworthy" in the case of Bitcoin.