Rarity: Crypto question enclosed

[Hal Finney]

On Sun, 10 Nov 1996, David K. Merriman wrote:
>
> My simple question is regarding key/certificate distribution:
> 
>         Is there any particular reason that such can't be accomplished via 
> on-line lists, and made available via a service on a port, using standard 
> (textual) commands, like mail and such are now?

There are a few things available or in the works right now.

Most of the PGP key servers respond to WWW requests already.  You connect
to them on a port, the HTTP port, send some standard textual commands
following the HTTP protocol, and get the requested PGP keys back in text
form.  How does this differ from what you were thinking of?

Other proposals, including Ron Rivest's SDSI, envision an environment where
most people make their own keys available via a URL.  Certificates would
have this URL in them and you could check it to make sure the key has not
expired or been revoked.  Then the only problem is distributing the URL...

John Gilmore's SWAN project is working to put keys into Domain Name System
(DNS) databases.  He has sample code which will get keys dynamically via
DNS calls, and DNS servers are now available which will support the new
data types necessary.  You can actually get his own key right now from
toad.com via this method.  This is a binary protocol rather than a textual
one but could be a good way to do it.

So I think you are right that on-the-fly key grabbing is the direction
in which things are moving, replacing large local databases of keys.

Hal