I have worked with the NCSC (National Computer Security Center) on certifying operating systems according to the "Orange Book". As I understand RIPEM there is a tree of agencies such that everyone must trust all elements of the tree between him and the root. This is much ingrained in all of the legally mandated security systems that I am aware of. It assumes, at first glance, that there is a root, an inner sanctum, which is totally trusted by all. The Orange Book for operating system security has such assumptions embedded deeply. We had to essentially weeken our security features by disableing our "mutually supicious user" logic to meet their requirements.

In <40485.pfarrell@cs.gmu.edu> Pat Farrell says: At this Fall's National Computer Security Conference, Mr. McNulty was a speaker on the NIST's digital signature session. They talked about both the non-RSA DSS, and use of Certifying Authorities with a RSA-based scheme.

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At that same conference, I gave a paper on security that described a fishnet of trust between systems. This was written in February 92, well before I read Phil's "web of trust" from the PGP docs, which I read sometime over the summer.

During the Q&A, I asked Mr NcNulty to compare the advantages and disadvantages of a heirarchical CA approach to an interlocking fishnet/web of trust. I hoped he would at least recognize that any heirarchy has problems from the top down if an upper level is compromised. Instead, he could not address any differences. I believe that working in the government has made the hierarchy seem to be the only implementation that he envisioned. He fobbed the question off to one of his technical underlings, but he, too, was unable to answer it (or even coherently address it).

It is a pervasive mind-set in military security.