Re: Certificate proposal

[Bob Smart <smart@mel.dit.csiro.au>]

I strongly support what Carl Ellison is saying. I've been meaning to write
up something on it for so long that I must accept I'll never do it. So
here instead is a quick example.

 > I don't understand this whole discussion.

The idea is to make the public key the centre of the architecture instead
of being an attribute of some other centre (e.g. distinguished name).

Consider the IPSEC case. The current situation is:

1. We go through some process, let's call it Process A, where we determine
   that we want to talk to IP address 192.9.8.7.

2. We go through another process where we obtain the public key of 192.9.8.7.

3. We then try to decide, based on one or more certificates, whether we
   trust the public key to be the correct public key for 192.9.8.7.

Now consider the key-centric version.

1. Process A returns a public key which denotes the destination we want to
   talk to.

2. We then go through a process to obtain the IP address that belongs to
   that public key. We probably won't use the public key as an index to
   get that information. We probably use the information that was input
   to Process A. In fact this information may fall out as a byproduct
   of Process A. [However if we needed to make a scalable distributed
   database of RSA public keys then I have a design to do this -
   available on application.]

3. We don't need to trust any certificates or anything else at this stage.
   The fact that the IP address belongs to the Public Key is signed by
   the Public Key itself.

The same thing happens with e-mail. If "Process A" gives us an e-mail
address to send to then we worry about whether we have the right public
key to go with it. If Process A gives us a Public Key then we can
have certainty about the associated e-mail address because the association
is signed by the Public Key.

And a big win that just falls out of this is that I can have a
continuous exchange of information with one IP destination even if
it keeps changing its actual IP address (mobile computing) or I
can have an e-mail conversation with a person who keeps changing
their e-mail address. The things you want just fall out instead of
requiring clever software solutions.

 >  A certificate is a signed
 > binding of a key and a unique name, right? 

In the key-centric world a certificate binds some attribute as a property
of a publc key. So an X.509 certificate would say "The owner of this
public key [i.e. person who knows the corresponding private key] owns
the following point in the X.500 namespace", rather than that "the
person identified by this DN owns the following publc key". Experience
has shown that the latter interpretation is a mine-field. It really
doesn't work.

The idea of a key-centric architecture is the proverbial "idea whose time
has come". There are echoes of it in MOSS and in STT. But it really calls
out for a group to work out a complete architecture. If someone wants to
start such a discussion I'll make sure I make time to be part of the process.

Bob Smart