Subject: RE: Dual-signed certificates

From: Simon Tardell <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 14:46:09 +0200

>      However, do people think it appropriate for the real external
> certificate to be carried around inside a CMS SignedData or a 
> self-signed certificate?  It certainly can be done, but should it?

If I've been reading the thread correctly the physical world analogy of the
"threat" that this would countermeasure is that a bank noone ever heard of
would issue an ID card with my picture (which they can do, because they saw
my ID card once) to someone who doesn't look like me and the question is not
whether you can trust the odd-looking fellow, but whether you can trust that
bank. 

When it comes to well-known banks, government branches, etc I assume they
won't do this, and I would not trust even my closest friends to be able to
assert with any degrees of certitude if a bank is honest or not issuing
certs. And no number of assertions that a Mickey Mouse CA issues a
certificate to the right guy would make me trust that CA to always do the
right thing (even if I would trust the particular certs it issued).

I am bit skeptical here, not because web-of-trust models don't have a
legitimate use, but rather because they don't mix very well with PKI.

Simon

Simon Tardell, Software Architect, iD2 Technologies
voice +46 8 7755225, fax +46 8 7267912, cell +46 70 3198319
[email-masked], http://www.iD2tech.com
Securing the Internet economy

---

From: Ben Laurie <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2000 16:35:55 +0100

> legitimate use, but rather because they don't mix very well with PKI.

Eh? What does this have to do with web-of-trust? This is to do with
contracts (i.e. the one between the subject and the issuer).

I do find it strange that there seems to be this kind of knee-jerk
reaction that says "if it isn't a CA signing, then it must be
web-of-trust, and that's bad".

Anyway, the point you are making appears to reinforce my point, not
argue against it: no-one can work out whether a CA is honest, but the
subject signs the cert, they can at least work out that _the subject_
trusts them (within the context of the issued cert, of course)!

Cheers,

Ben.

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