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Where is PKI-based sign-in? Why the heck every-fucking-one is so obsessed to move your identity to third parties (email, domain or webpage providers) and disreg

Where is PKI-based sign-in? Why the heck every-fucking-one is so obsessed to move your identity to third parties (email, domain or webpage providers) and disregards one of the most sane, obvious, flexible and secure (if implemented properly) concept out there? Added: My points are: - (Security) They are immune to attacks on websites. All attackers would extract is a public key. - (Flexibility) They are social, yet privacy-respecting. When you want to keep your identity across multiple services — you use the same key. When you don't want so — you just generate a new one — it's free. Some variants (like OpenPGP) have web-of-trust out of the box. - (Flexibility) They are supported on almost every modern system out there — if we're considering X.509 client certificates (probably not the best option, but). Just polish the damn UI for those already, please. - (Sanity) They are something user actually possesses, not temporarily leases like a Facebook account, email address or domain name. - (Flexibility/security) They could be stored as securely as one wishes. Keep those in a file (your OS or browser's keystore, actually) if you don't care, and HSMs are already here for those who want them. - (Flexibility/security) They could be easily synced across the devices. Just escrow the key material with other key — derived from a password, if you wish. - (Security) They could be mass-revoked. Not easy and not flawless, but there's OCSP. There're CRLs, too (although those suck). Certainly better than running across multiple sites if one had used the same (compromised) password with them.

skywhopper 12y ago
I'm pretty sure that's what was being referred to when the author mentioned corporate drones carrying around fobs. Generally those fobs contain the keys for PKI auth in secure-hardware form. However, having had to deal with using these myself, I'm not sure I would agree that PKI auth is "sane", "obvious", or "flexible". As for your other points, without a hardware-secure token, I don't think PKI is secure in the least. You're one zero-day browser crack away from revealing your private key. The solution to that of course is to require a passphrase, and oops, we're back to the original problem.
- drdaeman 12y ago
  I think, none of the possible auth schemes without hardware security modules or multi-factor auth are prone to zero-day browser vulnerabilities. To compromise the PKI to actually reveal the key material, one must have pretty severe vulnerability - which is less likely to happen, if compared to typical cross-site cookie-stealing hacks. Uh, and many desktop PCs have TPM chip available already - if those aren't banned by your country's import rules (unfortunately, my country does so). Those could be well abused by evil corporations in treacherous computing schemes, but they also have good uses. Probably not safe against TLAs, but since those chips hold the keys and do the crypto by themselves, they're very unlikely to reveal keys even in case of browser exploits. Malicious sign requests can happen, but that's about it - to me it seems to be much better than with every other approach to auth. So, even if you don't have a fancy USB-pluggable HSM stick it's well possible you still already have fairly secure way to store key material.
- hamburglar 12y ago
  > You're one zero-day browser crack away from revealing your private key. You're still better off than any password scheme, which is often attacked from the server side. And the lovely thing about the PKI method is that you can invest as much or as little as you want into protecting the private key and have the server not care even a little. On the weak end is the unprotected private key file on your hard drive, followed by a private key that's passphrase-protected (and even with this, there's a spectrum of configurable behavior governing how long it stays decrypted), followed by private keys on a physical device, followed by a physical device that requires two-factor access.

skywhopper 12y ago

I'm pretty sure that's what was being referred to when the author mentioned corporate drones carrying around fobs. Generally those fobs contain the keys for PKI auth in secure-hardware form. However, having had to deal with using these myself, I'm not sure I would agree that PKI auth is "sane", "obvious", or "flexible". As for your other points, without a hardware-secure token, I don't think PKI is secure in the least. You're one zero-day browser crack away from revealing your private key. The solution to that of course is to require a passphrase, and oops, we're back to the original problem.

drdaeman 12y ago
I think, none of the possible auth schemes without hardware security modules or multi-factor auth are prone to zero-day browser vulnerabilities. To compromise the PKI to actually reveal the key material, one must have pretty severe vulnerability - which is less likely to happen, if compared to typical cross-site cookie-stealing hacks. Uh, and many desktop PCs have TPM chip available already - if those aren't banned by your country's import rules (unfortunately, my country does so). Those could be well abused by evil corporations in treacherous computing schemes, but they also have good uses. Probably not safe against TLAs, but since those chips hold the keys and do the crypto by themselves, they're very unlikely to reveal keys even in case of browser exploits. Malicious sign requests can happen, but that's about it - to me it seems to be much better than with every other approach to auth. So, even if you don't have a fancy USB-pluggable HSM stick it's well possible you still already have fairly secure way to store key material.
hamburglar 12y ago
> You're one zero-day browser crack away from revealing your private key. You're still better off than any password scheme, which is often attacked from the server side. And the lovely thing about the PKI method is that you can invest as much or as little as you want into protecting the private key and have the server not care even a little. On the weak end is the unprotected private key file on your hard drive, followed by a private key that's passphrase-protected (and even with this, there's a spectrum of configurable behavior governing how long it stays decrypted), followed by private keys on a physical device, followed by a physical device that requires two-factor access.