more SSH MITM

[James A. Donald]

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On 7 Sep 2003 at 7:00, Thomas Shaddack wrote:
> Central certification authority has its risks and advantages. 
> Remembering the fingerprints of known keys and alerting for
> the new or changed ones has its advantages too. Why we
> shouldn't have it all?
>
> Why there couldn't be a system that would keep the database
> of known keys and report changes and new keys, like SSH does,
> and at the same give the possibility to sign the keys by
> several CAs? Effectively turning the hierarchy with
> potentially vulnerable top to a much-less-vulnerable web
> structure?

Ideally a client that mediates interactions should get trust
information from all relevant sources, and flag the user when
there is something unusual about an interaction.

However the more sources, the harder it is for mere software to
figure out what is meaningful and relevant, and therefore the
greater the risk that one will wind up continually throwing
irrelevant dialog boxes at the user, which the user eventually
learns to click through and ignore.

It is hard to do what you propose. 

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         James A. Donald
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