From: cman@communities.com (Douglas Barnes)
Date: Mon, 4 Sep 95 08:14:49 PDT
To: Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com>
Subject: Key attributes (was: pseudonyms & list health)
Message-ID: <v02120d08ac70d3652d61@[199.2.22.120]>
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If anyone still has the flyer from the Crypto '95 rump session,
there was a guy there talking about ANSI standards, and one of
the things he mentioned in his talk was work they were doing on
"key attributes."

I spoke with him afterwards, and we had a lively discussion about
this matter; especially with regard to the relationship between
key certification and key attributes. I argued that certification is
just another kind of attribute, while he is fairly hung up on
certificate hierarchies, etc. (Of course, robust and well-implemented
attributes couild be used to implement a hierarchical certification
structure if that's what was desired, but there seems to be a
deep-seated feeling among crypto folks of a certain ilk that such
structure needs to be hard-coded into things.)

I'll be following up on this matter with him when I am reuinited
with my notes, which made an unintended trip to SF, while I only
went to Mountain View.

>
>I could see such a system initially being piggybacked on PGP keys (the
>signatures would not be understandable by PGP though), although for
>Chaumian credential transfers the keys have to be specially structured
>and that would require a new approach.
>
>Who would be willing and/or interested enough to use such a system if it
>existed?
>
>Hal