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We should really work towards eliminating the need for CAs (or any central authority for that matter). http://convergence.io/ http://convergence.io/ is (was?)

We should really work towards eliminating the need for CAs (or any central authority for that matter). http://convergence.io/ http://convergence.io/ is (was?) a great idea and technical implementation of it, I installed two notaries on two different servers I own, and it worked great. It seems dead now. Don't know why.

higherpurpose 12y ago
Moxie has said they are waiting on browsers to implement TACK.io, but not entirely sure why tack is needed for Convergence.
- sedachv 12y ago
  TACK is supposed to be a backwards-compatible standard, Convergence is a replacement.
AnthonyMouse 12y ago
In theory DNSSEC should replace the CAs for domain validated certificates. The problem is that most clients don't support it (and there are currently some nontrivial reasons for that). What would be great is if somebody (I'm looking at you, Google or Mozilla) with the clout to get their CA cert trusted could set up a free website that would validate DNS TLSA records with DNSSEC (or DNSCurve if you like) and then automatically sign the certificate from the DNS record with the CA key. That should be at least as secure as domain validation with email, and a lot easier to do. Then you could put that cert on your server and use it for all the clients that don't support DNSSEC, and relegate DNSSEC and all its problems to just providing strong proof to the CA that it's signing the right certificate. Combine that with certificate pinning and it should pretty well solve the problem, and leave CAs to the job they should have had all along, which is providing extended validation certificates for banks and the like.
- y0ghur7_xxx 12y ago
  > In theory DNSSEC should replace the CAs for domain validated certificates. DNSSEC still has a central trust anchor that signs the records. Convergence is completely distributed.
  - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
    I'm not sure how you think Convergence is going to remove the central trust of DNS: If the attacker has control of your DNS records then every one of the notaries is going to go to the wrong IP address to check the certificate and they'll all see the same (wrong) one. Convergence also requires client support on all the clients before you can stop using CA-signed certificates, which isn't going to happen quickly. A CA (or someone who bought an intermediary CA certificate from an existing CA) could set up the thing I described in a matter of hours and henceforth anybody who needs a domain validated TLS certificate could get one instantly, securely and for free by just adding a DNS record and visiting that website.
    - y0ghur7_xxx 12y ago
      > I'm not sure how you think Convergence is going to remove the central trust of DNS: If the attacker has control of your DNS records then every one of the notaries is going to go to the wrong IP address to check the certificate and they'll all see the same (wrong) one. Notary requests use TLS too: If an attacker redirects my requests to other (untrusted) notaries my client will complain because it has the (self-signed) certs of the notaries cached. I can buy two or more servers in different counties, install the notary server on them, copy&paste the cert of the notaries in my client, and from that moment on Convergence works and my TLS connections are secure. > Convergence also requires client support on all the clients before you can stop using CA-signed certificates, which isn't going to happen quickly. Clients that use Convergence are effectively CA free from the moment they install it. The others can follow incrementally. > A CA (or someone who bought an intermediary CA certificate from an existing CA) could set up the thing I described in a matter of hours and henceforth anybody who needs a domain validated TLS certificate could get one instantly, securely and for free by just adding a DNS record and visiting that website. Notary certs are self signed. A browser vendor could set up a few notary servers that use certs they signed themselves and ship with them by default. Browser vendors already ship with the CA certs, so instead of the CA certs they would ship with their own cert that signed the ones the notaries use. If you don't trust them use your own notaries no problem. Everything works like before. I just think it's an awesome idea.
jwarkentin 12y ago
http://okturtles.com/ http://okturtles.com/

higherpurpose 12y ago

Moxie has said they are waiting on browsers to implement TACK.io, but not entirely sure why tack is needed for Convergence.

sedachv 12y ago
TACK is supposed to be a backwards-compatible standard, Convergence is a replacement.

AnthonyMouse 12y ago

In theory DNSSEC should replace the CAs for domain validated certificates. The problem is that most clients don't support it (and there are currently some nontrivial reasons for that). What would be great is if somebody (I'm looking at you, Google or Mozilla) with the clout to get their CA cert trusted could set up a free website that would validate DNS TLSA records with DNSSEC (or DNSCurve if you like) and then automatically sign the certificate from the DNS record with the CA key. That should be at least as secure as domain validation with email, and a lot easier to do. Then you could put that cert on your server and use it for all the clients that don't support DNSSEC, and relegate DNSSEC and all its problems to just providing strong proof to the CA that it's signing the right certificate. Combine that with certificate pinning and it should pretty well solve the problem, and leave CAs to the job they should have had all along, which is providing extended validation certificates for banks and the like.

y0ghur7_xxx 12y ago
> In theory DNSSEC should replace the CAs for domain validated certificates. DNSSEC still has a central trust anchor that signs the records. Convergence is completely distributed.
- AnthonyMouse 12y ago
  I'm not sure how you think Convergence is going to remove the central trust of DNS: If the attacker has control of your DNS records then every one of the notaries is going to go to the wrong IP address to check the certificate and they'll all see the same (wrong) one. Convergence also requires client support on all the clients before you can stop using CA-signed certificates, which isn't going to happen quickly. A CA (or someone who bought an intermediary CA certificate from an existing CA) could set up the thing I described in a matter of hours and henceforth anybody who needs a domain validated TLS certificate could get one instantly, securely and for free by just adding a DNS record and visiting that website.
  - y0ghur7_xxx 12y ago
    > I'm not sure how you think Convergence is going to remove the central trust of DNS: If the attacker has control of your DNS records then every one of the notaries is going to go to the wrong IP address to check the certificate and they'll all see the same (wrong) one. Notary requests use TLS too: If an attacker redirects my requests to other (untrusted) notaries my client will complain because it has the (self-signed) certs of the notaries cached. I can buy two or more servers in different counties, install the notary server on them, copy&paste the cert of the notaries in my client, and from that moment on Convergence works and my TLS connections are secure. > Convergence also requires client support on all the clients before you can stop using CA-signed certificates, which isn't going to happen quickly. Clients that use Convergence are effectively CA free from the moment they install it. The others can follow incrementally. > A CA (or someone who bought an intermediary CA certificate from an existing CA) could set up the thing I described in a matter of hours and henceforth anybody who needs a domain validated TLS certificate could get one instantly, securely and for free by just adding a DNS record and visiting that website. Notary certs are self signed. A browser vendor could set up a few notary servers that use certs they signed themselves and ship with them by default. Browser vendors already ship with the CA certs, so instead of the CA certs they would ship with their own cert that signed the ones the notaries use. If you don't trust them use your own notaries no problem. Everything works like before. I just think it's an awesome idea.

jwarkentin 12y ago

http://okturtles.com/ http://okturtles.com/