Subject: RE: NEW Data type for certificate selection ?

From: Anders Rundgren <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1998 07:59:59 +0200

Ed,
>The first usual misconception here is when people confuse trust in a
>certificate to trust in a certificate's contents -- too quite
>different animals. In fact, the first is directly defined under X.509
>or PKIX but the second depends on the CPS, which depends on each CA,
>which systematically negate it.

Systematically negate it?

Sorry, I fail to understand why it is technically, legally, etc. impossible to create trusted
CA services that issues certificates with contents that can actually be used.  But as I said earlier,
Swedes are probably morons as we just do it anyway in spite of the fact that it does not work :-)

Anders

---

From: Ed Gerck <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1998 03:29:18 -0300 (EST)

On Fri, 2 Oct 1998, Anders Rundgren wrote:

> Ed Gerck wrote:

Anders:

;-) As I suggested in my earlier msg, let us please leave
water-splashing to the ducks! Looks fun, but no work is done.

Probably you just could not yet read the reference I provided, which
is at http://143.106.29.39/certover.pdf -- "Overview of Certification
Systems: X.509, CA, PGP and SKIP". There is also a (older but more
complete) HTML version at cert.htm

However, the very end of its section on X.509 has the following text,
which I think will address your concerns -- please read the rest of
the paper for the context. You can also check the "Misconception"
series in the mcg-talk archives and the posting "Is there a business
for CAs?" -- the address is http://143.106.29.39/emails.htm

====================================================================
....[snip]

This paper reviews the three most common certification methods in use
today, which are based on X.509 Certificates and Certification
Authorities, PGP and, SKIP. These methods are studied from a systemic
point of view. The main motivations for this paper are: (i) Conduct a
comparative review of the three methods, (ii) Unify a set of
references to the most important issues in certification and
encryption, as they are related to Internet needs and recent
governmental policies, (iii) Provide a basis for the evaluation of
other certification solutions available or to be developed, (iv)
Identify room for improvements on the current security level of
certification, that could be dealt with by other methods, (v) Access
the impact on Internet transaction security due to the security
control policy needs of Governments currently actively promoting such
policy solutions.

....[snip]

In summary, there are many reasons that may jeopardize a
"certificate", create a weak link or, give the wrong contextual clues
for on-the-spot decision making.

The uncertainty reaches a point of almost uselessness, where CAs
usually explicitly state in the certification contracts that the CA
is exempt of all or almost all responsibility regarding the
"certificate", its accuracy and its data. For example:

     VERISIGN DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICES
     PROVIDED BY VERISIGN HEREUNDER INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY
     AND ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
     PARTICULAR PURPOSE. VERISIGN MAKES NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY
     THAT ANY CA OR USER TO WHICH IT HAS ISSUED A DIGITAL ID IN
     THE VERISIGN SECURE SERVER HIERARCHY IS IN FACT THE PERSON OR
     ORGANIZATION IT CLAIMS TO BE WITH RESPECT TO THE INFORMATION
     SUPPLIED TO VERISIGN. VERISIGN MAKES NO ASSURANCES OF THE
     ACCURACY, AUTHENTICITY, INTEGRITY, OR RELIABILITY OF
     INFORMATION CONTAINED IN DIGITAL IDS OR IN CRLs COMPILED,
     PUBLISHED OR DISSEMINATED BY VERISIGN, OR OF THE
     RESULTS OF CRYPTOGRAPHIC METHODS IMPLEMENTED.

However, the issuer's disclaimer (i.e., the CA's) is generally not
visible in the certificate itself, for all browsers and all
X.509 implementations. 

Further, such CA disclaimers are part of the CA's CPS (Certification
Practice Statement, which is outside the scope of X.509 and
constitutes the governing law that the CA presents to potential
clients). Thus, it can be seen as a legally-enforced way to reduce
deliverables to almost zero -- which is an accepted legal practice to
effectively reduce liability to zero. So, the point is not so much
that CAs deliver a product with zero warranty (which could be
disputed in court even in countries with common-law systems) but that
CAs are delivering a product with almost zero content (which any
court would accept as envolving almost zero liability) -- as it is
clearly exemplified in the second and third sentences of the above
disclaimer ("...MAKES NO REPRESENTATION ..." and "...MAKES NO
ASSURANCES ...").

Actually, the content of a CA's services in relationship to the
subject's data is not zero because there are two items that X.509
mandates and that a CA must deliver in a certificate without content
disclaimers (but, which may still be limited in scope by the CPS):
(i) that the subject's public-key has a working private-key
counterpart elsewhere (with no warranties that the public/private key
pair is not artifically weakened, that it is actually in the
possession of the named subject and that no one else has obtained a
copy of it), and (ii) that the subject's DN is unique to that CA
(with no warranties that such DN contains the actual subject's name,
location or that the subject even exists or has a correctly spelled
name -- as in "Internet Serices"). There are other items in the
certificate which have no relationship to the data supplied by the
subject but which are necessary for the proper use of the certificate
as a secure transport for information in the X.509 model, such as its
serial number, date of issuance, validity, the CA's signature, etc.,
which usually also carry limited CPS warranties (e.g., as in the case
of fraud, computer viruses, etc.) that may further jeopardize the
secure use of the certificate, without the user being even aware of
it.

Now, having cited Verisign's disclaimer, it is important to
understand its reasoning and need. It does not say that Verisign has
no warranty on its services or that it does not take any liability on
them. It only says that Verisign has no warranties and accepts no
liability for services that Verisign does not recognize it provides.
The fact that Verisign does not provide what perhaps the majority may
think they provide is another point altogether. The solution is,
perhaps, much more to educate the majority than to expect a company
to do what is maybe technically unfeasible in X.509 terms.  Thus, in
the author's opinion, Verisign's CPS is not at all at odds with X.509
or legislation -- so, it could very well be an example to be copied.
Maybe, it just truly represents the maximum one commercially and
technically could wish for in X.509's and CPS's terms.

Thus, for any generic CA one might expect a similar reasoning.
Indeed, if the only thing that a CA does (as per X.509) is to
challenge the subscriber's private-key in order to bind the
corresponding public-key with the subscriber's DN and, if it signs
the certificate with a CPS that says that any other data are being
copied as received but have not been verified (and have thus no
warranty) then the CA has no responsibility for the contents of the
certificate -- save the positive acknowledgement that the public-key
did have a counterpart when it was linked to that DN (where the CPS
could further provide exceptions for frauds, virus, MITM attacks,
etc.).

One may ask, why are such content limitations and disclaimers
necessary for certificates? First, a certificate is not like a car
that has a limited liablity in space and time (after all, a car is a
localized entity that can contain a limited number of people and only
one driver). A certificate can be endlessly multiplied and
simultaneously presented in a planet-wide area. Certificates are used
without limit in a chain of events, which can include other fully
unrelated certificates and people. With the growing attitude of
seeking large legal compensation for one's lack of foresight, the
liability pyramid created by a lesser disclaimer could easily extend
to the CA's client's clients and so on.

Insurance protection may help here, but there are several issues that
must be touched upon. The use of insurance always signals lack of
knowledge -- so it clearly cannot replace it. Further, there is no
insurance needed for a sure event and there is no insurance possible
for a sure risk. If a user (ie, a CA subscriber) is going to for pay
insurance to cover his liabilities and the CA's liabilities (which is
what it amounts to), then responsibility has gone full-circle and is
now only in the user's hands -- both to get adequate coverage and to
pay for it. While the CA has zero risk and cashes in as the middleman
between the user and the insurance companies. However, that does not
solve the risk problem for the user either, because one cannot make
the whole world sign up one huge insurance policy -- so the user and
the CA may be protected by the insurance policy that the user has
bought with their names as beneficiaries but that does not protect a
third-party (ie, the rest of the world). Last, since CA auditing does
not help here, then insurance does not have a reliable risk estimator
either, even for the CA subscriber.

Regarding recent legislation efforts, such as in Utah (US), Illinois
(US) and other legislation, it is clear form the above discussion
that demanding broader warrants by law can be self-defeating because
CAs may then be forced to reduce the deliverables to zero -- instead
of coming out and providing for more warranties. There simply is a
limit to what X.509 and the CA paradigm can offer regarding legal
certificate reliance and -- most importantly and often confused with
the former -- legal certificate content reliance. Law cannot push the
technical envelope of X.509.

When confronted with risk situations, a normal business solution is
to rely on auditing. However, auditing of a CA's certificates is also
a difficult, if not impossible, task. This is due to X.509, which
allows CA's practices and policies to be built upon islands of
self-regulation exactly on the most important issues of trust and
trust management. As publicly declared by Phillip Hallam-Baker, a
Verisign consultant, not only are the CPSs indeed different and
self-made by each CA but they are not designed to be audited, either:
"There is not as yet a defined standard for CA practices against
which a company may be audited. In effect each company states their
own practices in their Certificate Practices Statement (CPS). The CPS
is not a document designed for auditing use however. It describes a
'specification', it does not describe details which may be checked by
a third party in a systematic manner."

Thus, a X.509 certificate is essentially a bag of bytes, which
meaning and validity strongly depends on the CA. Moreover, in legal
reliance terms, one may trust the confirmation procedures of the CA
during certificate reliance, but one cannot rely upon them for other
than their value as a representation of the CA's authentication
management act expressed in the CA's own terms and rules --
therefore, a X.509 certificate is neither necessarily meaningful nor
valid in a user's reference frame or for the user's purposes.

Last, when one waches for some time the different mailing lists that
collects doubts and questions on certification systems from users or,
when one reads the majority of the newspaper or magazine articles on
the subject, one cannot help but perceive a pervailing feeling in the
user community to the effect that a certificate is magically infused
with trustworthiness -- which would imply a deterministic and
absolute view of certification. For example, as one user wrote:
"Please provide me with a list of all trusted CAs so that I can enter
those certificates into my browser.", few understand that trust must
be evaluated relative to the user -- the party at risk. Thus, the
very names Trusted Third Party or trusted CA raise already several
questions:

- in relationship to whom? 
- trusted by whom? 
- trusted for what? 
- trusted for how long? 
-- etc. 

How are these questions answered? Clearly, by each user (ie, verifier
or, relying party -- who is at risk) in its own domain, references
and terms. This means that certificates are essentially statements
from a CA, not fact, and that meaning and trust on a certificate
(like beauty) is in the eyes of the beholder, i.e., depends on each
user.

==================================================================

Cheers,

Ed Gerck
______________________________________________________________________
Dr.rer.nat. E. Gerck                     [email-masked]
http://novaware.cps.softex.br
 ---- Meta-Certificate Group Member -- http://www.mcg.org.br ---

---

From: Tony Bartoletti <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 02 Oct 1998 11:59:46 -0700

>Swedes are probably morons as we just do it anyway in spite of the fact that it does not work :-)

Anders,

Current certification systems do "work", much as an ordinary telephone
directory works.  The analogy would be closer if the publisher of the
phone book digitally signed each entry.

The phone book works because most people are honest and want to help
make things work.  But I have no real way of knowing that the entry
for "Acme Hardware, Third Street" is indeed a hardware store, or can
be trusted to perform as I might expect it to.

People expect a digital-sig PKI to somehow automatically provide the
root of trust that is needed.  Indeed, the terminology "root key",
"root CA" suggests as much.  But unless a third party can be relied
upon to reimburse me for my losses, when I send a digital check to
"Acme Hardware" and recieve nothing in return, this third party is
really not much more than a telephone directory.

We want more, and need more from PK technology.  The emerging PKIs
are a start, a component, and a limited one.  Again, it does "work"
in a statistical sense, because most people are not crooks.

My 2 cents.

___tony___ 

Tony Bartoletti                                             LL
SPI-NET GURU                                             LL LL
Computer Security Technology Center                   LL LL LL
Lawrence Livermore National Lab                       LL LL LL
PO Box 808, L - 303                                   LL LL LLLLLLLL
Livermore, CA 94551-9900                              LL LLLLLLLL
email: [email-masked]   phone: 510-422-3881             LLLLLLLL

---

From: "Phillip M Hallam-Baker" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1998 10:16:04 -0400

> "certificate", its accuracy and its data. For example:

Taking one part of a contract in isolation is misleading. The VeriSign
contract has a 'disclaim all implied warranties clause', in other words
it states that the only warranties provided are those explicitly stated.

The explicitly stated warranty consists of NetSure insurance in a sum
that varies from $1,000 to $100,000 depending on the certificate
category. If necessary higher sums could be agreed. This is real
insurance underwritten by a leading insurer.

> As publicly declared by Phillip Hallam-Baker, a

Here you are quoting me out of context. This was in the context of 
your argument concerning the use of a standardized audit statement. 

Taking off the cuff statements out of mailing list exchanges and
quoting them verbatim offline without checking the context seems 
somewhat odd behaviour.

I was arguing that before you could use 'audit statements' in the
manner you envisioned there had to be agreement on audit standards.
Work on audit standards for a CPS is taking place. It is thus entirely
misleading to take a specific objection to a specific use of auditing
for a specirfic purpose and conclude that no CPS can ever be audited.

Saying that a CPS issued by BongoCert Inc. may not necessarily prove
to be auditable is not the same as saying that 'A CPS is not designed
to be audited'. In fact a CPS can be designed to be auditable and
the ability to conduct an audit may be considered a quality differentiator
between CPSs.

Rather than 'does not describe' I would instead restate this as
'does not necessarily describe'.

The problem I believe I was having with your argument was that the
invocation of 'auditors' appeared to be used as a panacea as if the
statement 'I have been audited' translated to the conclusion 'He is 
trustworthy' without taking account of how the audit was performed,
who performed it and what the objective of the audit was.

			Phill

---

From: Ed Gerck <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1998 15:47:25 -0200 (EDT)

On Wed, 7 Oct 1998, Phillip M Hallam-Baker wrote:

> Ed Gerck wrote;

Phill:

Which are zilch to the cert user, as Verisign's CPS affirm. Of
course, I am not talking about the cert subscriber (that has a
contract with Verisign and a limited warranty) but I am talking about
a general cert user -- who is not privy with that contract, at all,
and which is denied any liability from Verisign.

If I make an offer to the whole world, capable of acceptance without
communication by mere conduct, I can be contractually bound.  The
classical example was the 19th century case of the Carbolic Smoke
Ball Company, which advertised an offer of money to any purchaser of
its product (from a retailer, not from the advertising manufacturer)
who contracted influenza after using it.  A purchaser sued
successfully for the money.

The same principle governs modern cheque guarantee cards.  The bank
promises anyone who accepts a cheque covered by the card that it will
honour the cheque.  The bank can be compelled to do so. 

So a CA who promises users that its certificates are correct can be
sued by a user. 

Or, a CA that promises users that its CRLS are correct can be sued by
a user.

That does not undermine my conclusion, however, because CAs are ever
so careful that neither their certificates nor their CPSs contain any
promise open for acceptance in the way I have described above -- or
in the way that you have described -- or in the way that users
mistakenly may imagine.

It is that fact, rather than the impossibility of such a promise
being binding, that protects the CA. 

This point is also contained, albeit more mildly, in my posting on
"If there is a business for CAs" (archives for mcg-talk, cert-talk,
e-carm, etc) and I thank Nicholas Bohm for the legal input on it. It
is also in the Overview paper at certover.pdf.

This is common misconception #10:

  CAs have subscribers and users. Users have no contract to
  CAs and are specifically excluded from any warranty or liability
  by commercial CAs very well-written an public CPSs -- even though
  users are called "relying-parties" in such CPSs. However, users
  must understand that they are a "relying-party"  of their own due
  dilligence.

>insurance underwritten by a leading insurer.

The NetSure insurance only applies to Verisign's subscribers -- who
pay for the insurance and are so insured ;-)

It does NOT apply to the world at large, the user, who is not privy
to the contract between Verisign and the subscriber. You would need
the whole world to sign and pay into that NetSure policy in order to
make it begin to be useful to users.. not a bad perspective for some,
but unlikely.

Further, just to make it clear why you cannot fight open risks with
insurance, suppose that 1,000 users have problems with just 1 cert
for ACME, issued by Verisign and insured by NetSure. I ask:

- Who is laible for what?

- Who should each of the 1,000 users sue: ACME, Verisign, the insurer
or, all?

- How much is each of the 1,000 users entitled to claim under
NetSure: the full certificate's insurance for each (thus, suppose,
1,000 x $1,000) or a rate of the total insurance (say $1,000 divided
by 1,000)?

- Who pays what NetSure does not pay but each 1,000 users will
certainly claim?

Thus, it is not misleading to single out that part, since that part
is what negates the user's rigths.

But, I am sure we all know this. Especially the guys that calculated
the NetSure insurance coverage and its exceptions, as well as the
guys that wrote Verisign's CPS.

So -- why the fuss? Perhaps, it is intersting to view common
misconception #10 under a different light. It was very well stated by
a Harvard-graduated lawyer, who declared:

 > CAs and PKI rely on that same sort of systems trust.  You trust
 > that the CA, as an expert system, will do the identify
 > verification, certification revocation, etc. properly.  It's
 > analogous to when you trust that the architect/civil engineer who
 > designed your house (and who are part of a system of education,  
 > licensing, and bureaucratic approval) did it properly and  don't
 > worry about your house falling down.
 
To which I publicly responded, with:

 The analogy you point out does NOT exist and this is a common
 misconception. A relying-party (aka, the cert user) cannot rely upon
 the CA as a house owner relies upon the expert engineer he hired,   
 for several reasons.
 
 First, because there is no contract between a user and a CA while
 the engineer was hired by the house owner or, in other words,
 because the person who pays for the certificate is not the one who
 relies on it. Second, because it is generally accepted that Internet
 traffic is subject to so many possible sources of disturbance
 (willingful or by chance) in so many possible routes that a CA
 cannot present a guarantee of correct results, just of correct
 methods -- which is also law doctrine for consultation work and data
 processing in general. Third, because a certificate is an open-ended
 risk.  Fourth, because certificates cannot really be revoked, and so
 represent an open assignment.  For a list of 16+ causes, you can
 check http://www.mcg.org.br/cert.htm

One other cause is that Verisign denies warranties to the public at
large -- as commented at the top.

Clearly, for any CA the majority of relationships is, albeit
indirectly, defined by CA/user. The number of CA/subscriber cases is
much smaller. This highlights the importance of this issue, since
users are also the ones that must primarily weigh potential losses.

Further, it is also clear that users may hold the subscribers to be
responsible. However, if the subscriber publicly denies any liability
to anyone in the world, then a user may also have only its own due
dilligence to rely upon.

>your argument concerning the use of a standardized audit statement. 

I provided the full reference, which was in hypertext under your
name and as reference [Bak98] in http://www.mcg.org.br/certover.pdf.
As referenced in: (long URL)

http://www.mcg.org.br/cgi-bin/lwg-mcg/MCG-TALK/archives/mcg/date/article-379.html

and anyone could search the archives for the full thread.

>quoting them verbatim offline without checking the context seems 

As above, that is not the case. The reader can go to the original
thread and check the full contexts of all your messages -- which IMO
will not change anything in that isolated paragraph. Now, if you want
to imply that public mailing lists are not useful to provide
meaningful information without further checking, then I must agree as
we see how much misinformation is oftentimes put out through these
channels. Which we must oftentimes weed out and just get what seems
to be fitting to our own intelligence. Perhaps, this posting also
exemplifies that.

However, if you feel that you can issue a more accurate statement,
then I will be pleased to change them in all the certover.pdf,
certover.ps and cert.htm.htm files -- which have BTW been downloaded
more than 55,000 times in the last year and are cited in some books
and thesis on the subject.

>for a specirfic purpose and conclude that no CPS can ever be audited.

But, not the way they are -- and that was what you yourself wrote in
the quote above. Now, I ask: what does a subscriber buy from Verisign
today -- a cert issued acording to today's CPS that we both agree
cannot be audited or, based on a future Verisign's CPS? And, I also
ask: What should we discuss -- today's CPS risks or risks of future
CPSs we do not know of?

>'does not necessarily describe'.

Let me comment by parts. The relevant section of your quote began
with:

>>"In effect each company states their own practices in their
>> Certificate Practices Statement (CPS)." 

This means that unless we believe in serendipity as a valid work tool
then we should expect that CPSs from different CAs do not
interoperate. This reflects BTW a basic flaw of laissez-faire
certification systems such as X.509 and PKIX, exactly where we would
need interoperation -- the semantic rules that certificate issuance
must obey are not defined by the standard but ad hoc by each company.
Who cares that the syntatic rules are clear (ahem...)  in the
standard? Is that all?

>>"The CPS is not a document designed for auditing use however." 

Clear -- like a car is not designed to fly, and does not fly. I also
think that if a CPS would allow what it is not designed to do (as you
seem to imply in your comment above) then that is a security flaw,
by itself no? I mean, what other unthought-of properties could one
spelunk from it? Will such "easter eggs" be good or bad for me? Meet
you in court, you say ....

>>"It describes a 'specification', it does not describe details which
>>may be checked by a third party in a systematic manner."

It says "it does not describe" and you want to change to "it does not
necessarily describe". Fine. However, are we not again relying on
serendipity? And, as Descartes affirmed: "Doubt until you have proof"
means that I can surely doubt such statement will ever support the
exsitence of even ONE auditable CPS, right?

>who performed it and what the objective of the audit was.
I do not think that can be deduced from any of my postings or
articles. Nor inferred. Should I be bound by a word I did not say? 

On the contrary, my posting considerably stressed that any reliance
derived from trust must depend on the exact underlying terms and
rules that support such trust:

 Thus, in legal reliance terms, one trusts the name confirmation
 procedures of the CA during certificate reliance, but one cannot
 rely upon the name for other than its value as a representation of
 the CA's authentication management act expressed in the CA's own
 terms and rules.

Cheers,

Ed Gerck
 --- Meta-certificate Group Member -- http://www.mcg.org.br ---

---

From: "Phillip M Hallam-Baker" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 12:51:18 -0400

Ed,

	This has gone way off topic for PKIX. I don't see a limitation
of the PKIX infrastructure being discussed, clearly the types of insurance
you envision can be supported by PKIX. If a customer wants to purchase a
cert carrying such insurance the technology clearly is not the impediment.

	I really don't think that the tone of your argument is suitable
for a PKIX discussion which has already gone off topic. You started off
with a blanket assertion that every PKIX CA must inevitably disclaim
all legal liability. That is simply not true.

	I really don't think I want to continue to debate with someone
who titles their emails 'common misconception #10'. It betrays an
apparent intention to demonstrate the ignorance and wrong headedness
of the other side.

	You appear to be arguing that the emperor has not clothes and that you
are the only taylor who can dress him. Whether or not we accept your first
premise I doubt many accept your second. The emperor has sufficient clothes
for the weather he is currently going out in and by the time the weather is
worse he will have donned his multi-layer alpine ski wear and hazardous
environment encounter suit.

		Phill

---

From: Ed Gerck <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 16:34:24 -0200 (EDT)

Phill:

If you believe that insurance is a topic for PKIX, pls go ahead.

If you believe that one-sided PKIX subscriber-CA insurance can solve
the security problem of many-sided PKIX user-subscriber security, pls
also go ahead.

>all legal liability. That is simply not true.

My assertion was "every PKIX CA must inevitably disclaim all legal
liability to the user" -- not to the subscriber.

The fact that you, again, want to put a blank denial over a
qualified denial is misleading to say the least.

If you think that you can use the tone you want but others cannot
disagree in technical terms, as I did, then this is a "hollier than
thou attitude" which would be slightly amusing if PKIX would be
private and personal -- but which is unacepatble for a IETF
discussion, IMHO.

BTW, to say that it "is simply not true" is too simple -- sorry, no
cigar. 

>apparent intention to demonstrate the ignorance and wrong headedness

No, it says what it is -- a common misconception, also rather old.
BTW, you did not show any counterarguments.

>are the only taylor who can dress him. 

That is again a blank statement you put out. But, again, I refuse to
be bound by words I did not say. Please, do not keep trying that
because I will keep denying I said so -- with the difference that I
can prove that I did not say it. Truth begins at samll values.

>Whether or not we accept your first

I doubt your own statement is on-topic for PKIX. To say that
something is "sufficient" demands proof -- which you did not show,
while I did show otherwise. Hence your paragraph above has no content
I acn measure.

Just don't try to convince the whole world that everyone should buy
into it just because you say it will be just fine. The very fact that
you did not answer one of the questions I posed already shows that
you are still talking about emperors while the Internet is already
beyond democracy.

Cheers,

Ed Gerck

---

From: "Phillip M Hallam-Baker" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 16:09:05 -0400

> liability to the user" -- not to the subscriber.

A statement which is untrue, completely and utterly wrong.

> BTW, you did not show any counterarguments.

I believe that I countered your statement that a CPS cannot
be audited by stating that the ABA was working on audit standards
for that very purpose.

As an employee of the major CA on the Internet I am not going
to speculate on the future liabilities or insurance which might
be offered by VeriSign or any of its competitors here. The PKIX 
architecture does not prevent such products being offered or 
supported which was your claim.

I will merely remind people that five years ago folk were loudly
proclaiming that a public CA such as VeriSign was an impossibility.

		Phill

---

From: Ed Gerck <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 19:51:06 -0200 (EDT)

>A statement which is untrue, completely and utterly wrong.

Denial is good. But it is no more than a marketing technique when
Verisign's own warranty declaration and CPS say what I affirm and you
deny.

I also note, for the record and I have already made that clear, what
is called a CA "user" is not the subscriber that buys the cert
services from the CA, but the Joe Doe that needs to rely on the cert
presented by the subscriber and that has no relationship whatsoever
with the CA. Certainly, the majority of cases in international trade,
since not all users will also be customers of the very same CA.

This question gains in importance as we remember that there is no
international law system that uniquely defines matters, not even in
the same country. So, a cert user represents an open risk also in the
legal sense, and not only in terms of key-snatching, virus, etc.
Given the overabundance of lawyers in the US alone and the growing
attitude of finding culprits for one's own lack of foresight, any CA
that makes an offer to the whole world, capable of acceptance without
communication and by mere conduct, is suicidal.

Is this relevant to PKIX? No, if PKIX is being designed to work
within a company or in a bounded environment, where subscribers and
users share a common and pre-existent trusted environment. Yes, if
PKIX wants to address no-previous relationship cases worldwide.

>be audited by stating that the ABA was working on audit standards

First, the statement that current CPSs cannot be audited was NOT mine
(as you unfortunately misstated) but YOUR own and public, verbatim
as:

 The CPS is not a document designed for auditing use however. It
 describes a 'specification', it does not describe details which may
 be checked by a third party in a systematic manner."

Second, it is very probable that *any* future CPS standards (of which
there are none today) will NOT provide any assurance of correct
results -- just correct methods and within some broad assumtpions.
Which is however already granted by law such as by the UCC. Thus, the
"new" CPS standard will very probably simply deal with a convergence
of terms and clauses, while leaving open the door I mentioned you
saying.

But, while that remains to be seen it is perhaps clear that you
cannot cite non-existent CPS regulations to say that current CPSs are
or will be auditable in a next incarnation. Oftentimes, problems have
no solutions in a broader scope. In particular, I have reasonable
doubt that one could ever audit or warrant ***results*** in CA
certification.

>supported which was your claim.
 
I appreciate your technical and business competence.

However, I may indeed question why all the work if no public CA will
ever be able to offer public warranty on results, from a general
subscriber to the general public. Which is what the public needs.

>proclaiming that a public CA such as VeriSign was an impossibility.

I did not say that. In fact, I have recently affirmed it is a very
good business to be a CA. The question is ...what next?

Cheers,

Ed Gerck