From: Anonymous Sender <nobody@privacy.nb.ca>
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 00:30:13 -0700 (PDT)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: RE: Apple crypto engineer position available
Message-ID: <d3ec812823ea7f1657a261d7d54aea84@privacy.nb.ca>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>PGP cut the gordian knot and demonstrated that it was _possible_
>to have a successful PKI application without a CA. But that is not
>to say that a trusted third party cannot add value to an
>application. PGP validated PKI generally but it did not invalidate
>the CA concept - in the PGP system everyone is a trust provider,
>everyone is in that sense a CA.

PGP did in fact invalidate CA concept, very successfully. There is a
world of difference between "everyone is a trust provider" and several
centralized CAs.

Authentication is an essential part of security. If one assumes wrong
who she is talking to then all "strong crypto" used is irrelevant, since
the middleman is browsing the plaintext.

If there is a need, CA customers will be given middleman's keys and all
traffic will be systematically captured, re-encrypted and forwarded to
the intended recipient for as long as required. Maybe even keys with the
same hash (id) can be generated to pass the verification. What percentage
of users would do the non-automated, manual check anyway ?

If trusting a secret key to escrowing entity (GAK) is a bad deal, how is
trusting someone's identity to CA any different ? In both cases security
is deposited with an organization that can be influenced in any number of
ways.

The CA concept does not work because security and privacy are inherently
individual, and any forced insertion of third parties in the process is
bound to miserably fail.

The Fool