> Yes there is - the ability to verify identity and hence actually prevent MITM attacks. In asymmetric encryption - we both will generate a public/private key

> Yes there is - the ability to verify identity and hence actually prevent MITM attacks. In asymmetric encryption - we both will generate a public/private key pair. We can walk up to each other, exchange USB drives containing public keys, and now we can communicate securely. We have just created a secure connection without a certificate. All the CA is a middle guy that says "Oh you want to talk to someone claiming to be Alice? Get their public key and I'll verify it as I know Alice." But really how do you trust that middle guy? > And in most cases where an attacker has access to read a network, they can write to it, too. Well maybe - put it into context. If a wifi system is open - it's extremely easy to sniff packets (shown by the success of Firesheep). ARP spoofing and other tricks are more complicated - but less likely to happen (someone would have to prop this on a table and it would be a dead giveaway that they are up to no good [1]). > You can't ignore key distribution no matter how annoying it is. I'm not ignoring it - I just want to shift it from having central CAs that can sign certificates for any domain (superfish anyone?) to CA certificates that can only sign for specific domains. Perhaps the CA certificate could be stored in DNS (even glued to the domain like NS records are)? Perhaps we keep the current CAs but force them to allow them to sign a CA cert that is restricted to a certain domain (for free or next to free)? > If a CA issues a false cert, that becomes a mathematical fact, and the CA gets revoked. That doesn't matter - if I'm a bad guy and find this I know I would only have a limited time before it's discovered. So, if I'm a smart bad guy I find a targeted attack, get the bad certificate and do my attack. By the time people figure out what happened - my attack is over and I got what I wanted. Just think of the amount of damage that could be done in a busy place with free wifi and a bad gmail.com certificate. I'm waiting for the day that happens and everyone can't understand why their [insert service provider] account was compromised... > Security here is simply not a binary thing. I never said it was - but the current system is broken [2] [3] [4] [5]. Even Schneier says it's broken - which I find he is pretty respectable in the crypto industry. [1] http://i.imgur.com/MFbOE0C.png http://i.imgur.com/MFbOE0C.png [2] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/11/state_of_ssl_analysis/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/11/state_of_ssl_analysi... [3] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/03/chinese_ca_issu.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/03/chinese_ca_is... [4] http://arstechnica.com/security/2011/09/comodo-hacker-i-hacked-diginotar-too-other-cas-breached/ http://arstechnica.com/security/2011/09/comodo-hacker-i-hack... [5] http://waf-devel.blogspot.com/2015/04/stop-blaming-chinese-web-is-broken.html http://waf-devel.blogspot.com/2015/04/stop-blaming-chinese-w...