CDR: Schneier: Why Digital Signatures are not Signatures (was Re: CRYPTO-GRAM, November 15, 2000)

[Jim Choate]

On Wed, 15 Nov 2000, Mac Norton wrote:

> I think we knew that, but the particular problem posited here is
> that Alice's sig can be associated with a record she never saw,
> an acute symptom, not a chronic one, I'd hope. But I have asked
> for education in that regard, and hope it's forthcoming.

If 'you' knew that, nobody could tell from the comments. The general
cypherpunks view seems to be the PGP web-of-trust is sufficient (and they
are woefully wrong).

This is actualy one of the two key problems with PKC management,
authentication/verification. The other being scaling. The
authentication/verification problem itself has two branches. The first
being submitter/user authentication and the other being
protocol/implimentation verification.

As to scaling, I've been touting 'small network' approaches for years. It's 
interesting that Napster and it's ilk are just that. Couple this with a
universal namespace (ala Plan 9) and some service like LDAP and you might
have a usable system. Couple this with a cryptographicaly secure network
layer (this is another key management problem also) and 'indepenent' or
open source nameservers (for IP resolution, not to be confused with the
'working' namespace I mention above). 

The only thing I've seen that looks remotely workable is completely
distributed and open sourced. The problem is setting up the not-for-profit
namespace and key registries (assuming the problems above are resolved).
How should they be funded?

There is no real answer to any of them at the current time though.

    ____________________________________________________________________

                     He is able who thinks he is able.

                                           Buddha

       The Armadillo Group       ,::////;::-.          James Choate
       Austin, Tx               /:'///// ``::>/|/      ravage at ssz.com
       www.ssz.com            .',  ||||    `/( e\      512-451-7087
                           -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'-
    --------------------------------------------------------------------