At 06:50 PM 1/30/96 -0500, Phill wrote:
Question is how can Netscape (or anyone else) _securely_ allow an arbitrary CA's certificate to be used? Certainly the process cannot be automatic. Binding the Verisign public key into the browser may be an undesirable solution, but the problem is to think of a better one.
It's easy, and I gather Netscape has done it in 2.x - let the _user_ decide what CAs to trust. For convenient verification, you can have the user sign the keys for each of the CAs, and then the chain-following software only needs to compare each certificate's signer with the user's own pubkey, rather than comparing with Verisign's. If you want to be automatic about it, you _could_ have the user sign Verisign's key when first generating keys, or you could ask the user the first time. You've got to pull the wool over your _own_ eyes, here :-) #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com, Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 # http://www.idiom.com/~wcs