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Re: SDSI and key distribution
At 03:22 PM 5/7/96 -0700, Wei Dai wrote:
>Alice and Bob meet at a party. They want to exchange public keys, but
>Alice forgot to bring her business card. Memorizing a 160-bit hash can be
>somewhat cumbersome, even if they are nicely encoded.
>
>Let me propose a simple solution to this problem: a secure public database
>that allows lookup using arbitrary octect strings. [...] When
>she meets Bob, she can just say, "My public key is ARB!!'s Alice."
>
>The idea here is that ARB's local names are completely arbitrary and does
>not necessarily have any relation to any other names (e.g., trade marks or
>legal names). They serve only as indices to the Principal: objects.
Sounds good, but isn't this already what happens when I say:
finger me at cme@clark.net -- my key is there?
Finger isn't secure enough. I'd need clark.net to have a recognized key and
to sign mine -- but ISP name assignments seem to be exactly what you're
suggesting.
- Carl
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