At 09:35 PM 10/10/95 -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 16:26:24 -0400
From: Peter Williams <peter(_at_)verisign(_dot_)com>
Break the key distribution, you break the
rest of the system. Break the public trust semantics, you break
public confidence. Noone will use the system, of course. pem-dev
has been through this debate many times.
Except as flame bait, I didn't quite understand your purpose in
posting this message to pem-dev?
MOSS reacted to PEM poor deployment by removing 1422, and changing
the secure mail procedures. It also added MIME.
Many of use argued that removing mandatory 1422 was a bad thing, if the PEM
work was to be supplanted by MOSS, versus augmented, as a choice. Fortunately,
the PEM RFCs lie available for std reference. Given MOSS RFC, lots of crypto
deployment can now occur in differing security environments, with diffeent
needs,
using either PEM or MOSS. Wrt this choice, Ive been a consistent supporter
of MOSS
progress. Given the evidence of PEM-MOSS mixed deployment, is there a need
to now
harmonise MOSS and PEM, or at least harmonise multiparts and PEM?
We are seeing here - in practice - that when a security system is deployed for
commerce/payment purposes, its absolutely critical that measures be available to
prevent attacks on the trust relations. This is what 1422 minimises.
A big issue here is, also, whether the 1421 ENCRYPTED processing rules are
important, also, for commerce/payment based on asymmetric key management.
This is another big difference between MOSS and PEM.
Yes, Ted, I try to be argumentative; it often assists the underlying points
to be brought out.
Do you believe RSA/DSA/DH-based commerce/payment systems are viable without
the objectives of RFC 1422, or the authentication before decryption rule
of 1421/1422?
On my other points, do you believe a 1422 CA company can really face upto
commercial operating reality without being prepared to enforce its policies,
possibly legally?