Comment by tptacek
11 hours ago
Your counterproposal is simply to expand the number of individuals who get to make those global judgements!
11 hours ago
Your counterproposal is simply to expand the number of individuals who get to make those global judgements!
How so? In the current regime, I can obtain a certificate automatically via ACME. if I control the domain, so to retain control over myexample.com, I need to trust the DNS infrastructure up to my TLD and trust every CA, including the "my secret key is return 4" crowd
In a DANE world, I need only trust the DNS authorities, and there are ways to boost trust in, e.g. the dot-com key management. (Could even go full ring signatures if we wanted.)
Someone over on foo.wtf.lol can't hurt me.
Two problems with this: first, it describes a spherical cow universe where there is only DANE; on Earth 1, widespread deployment of DANE would add to the number of trusted authorities, not restrict it. More importantly: it assumes a universe in which everyone leaves .COM, which is controlled by the US IC, and somehow finds a TLD that can be trusted both as a domain operator and a CA. When that institution is inevitably suborned by the IC, there will be no recourse, except to migrate like a hermit crab to some new TLD and wait for it to happen all over again.
Meanwhile: this CA is likely to be killed outright for this fuckup.
Well I gues TLS is pointless then because HTTP still exists. The point is obviously to eventually completely distrust centralized CAs.
What stops our adding a record that requires DANE and a conventional CA? (Preload it like HSTS, if you'd like, to prevent US IC downgrade attacks if people stupidly configure DNSSEC to fail open.)
This way, fuckups like this CA can't hurt me because they couldn't break DANE and IC couldn't hurt me (more than they can already) because WebPKI would have to approve too.
I don't think the CA death penalty addresses the problem. Just as in the physical world, the death penalty isn't a perfect deterrent.
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