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Re: [E-CARM] PKI, CAs, TTPs &c.
[Massive recipient list deleted, particularly as the cert-talk list
manager has ruled this topic out of scope.]
> From: "J. Andres Hall" <jah@alumni.princeton.edu>
>
> Hell will freeze over before I'll use a crypto digital signature
> system that relies on a third party to generate key pairs, because
> the whole idea of non-repudiation rests on the concept that the
> private key is *never* in the hands of anyone *except* its
> legitimate user, and this certainly includes the key generation
> process.
That is a legitimate belief, but the assertion is false. You may wish
to handle your keys that way, but "the whole idea of non-repudiation"
does not depend on everyone else agreeing.
An equally legitimate operational scenario is that the private key is
*never* in the hands of the legitimate user. Only a piece of equipment
which generates the key and squirts it into a token, but never reveals
it to the equipment operator, would know the key. Once initialized,
the token would never cough up the key to anyone, so the only way the
user could share the key is to physically hand over both the token and
the PIN. One could argue that non-repudiation is stronger with the
third party key generator than without.