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Re: Summary Trust x Delegation
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all good points, Ed. Thank you.
At 05:44 PM 6/20/97 -0300, E. Gerck wrote:
>On Fri, 20 Jun 1997, Carl Ellison wrote:
>
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>->
>-> At 01:02 PM 5/28/97 +0200, Stef Hoeben wrote:
>-> >But the problem remains that the PKI's at the moment are not usable
>-> >(special purpuse stuff like SET, ... excluded) BECAUSE you can't
>-> >trust the certficates. The above looks to me like a playing with
>-> >words which goes around this problem. See below for an example.
>->
>-> AHA!
>->
>-> Thank you, Stef! I believe I now know the magic words for this debate.
>->
>-> The crypto world, and especially the X.509 world, have been worried forever
>-> about wheher you can trust the certificates.
>->
>-> We, in SPKI, assume you can trust the certificates (riding on the shoulders
of
>-> the X.509 work) and now focus on the question of what you can trust about
the
>-> certified key.
>->
>-> These are two different issues entirely.
>->
>
>Exactly, but with three comments.
>
>First: You can't trust a X.509 certificate because it is based on
>extrinsic references that are outside the dialogue of the parties, which
>references are always relative to assumptions that are unknown to the
>parties. A X.509 certificate may come from a 100% trusted CA and be 100%
>wrong. One could say that the shoulders of X.509 work have already
>collapsed on its own weight ;-). So, a X.509 certificate is not able to
>provide a secure binding between an entity and a key -- which is what it
>was supposed to do -- even though it provides a secure binding between the
>certificate and the key. Two entirely different points.
>
>Second: Notwithstanding the collapse of X.509, a SPKI certificate aims at
>assigning "what" and not "who", as you say. The point here is how to
>assure that the "what" is exactly followed.
>
>Third: So I think SPKI should not say that X.509 certs are the base for
>SPKI for three reasons: (i) they are fairly independent, (ii) X.509 certs
>are not "certificates" as a "certificate of deposit" is and may be 100%
>wrong, (iii) SPKI can be based on other trust models, which may even
>include X.509-like certs but without extrinsic references.
>
>Yours,
>
>Ed Gerck
>
>______________________________________________________________________
>Dr.rer.nat. E. Gerck egerck@laser.cps.softex.br
>http://novaware.cps.softex.br
>P.O.Box 1201, CEP13001-970, Campinas-SP, Brazil - Fax: +55-19-2429533
>
>
>
>
>
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