On 12 September 2011 18:39, Robert Bonomi <bonomi@mail.r-bonomi.com> wrote:
Seriously, about the only way I see to ameliorate this kind of problem is for people to use self-signed certificates that are then authenticated by _multiple_ 'trust anchors'. If the end-user world raises warnings for a certificate 'authenticated' by say, less than five separate entities. then the compomise of any _single_ anchor is of pretty much 'no' value. Even better, let the user set the 'paranoia' level -- how many different 'trusted' authorities have to have authenticated the self-signed certificate before the user 'really trusts' it.
So if I want my small website to support encryption, I now have to pay 5 companies, and hope that all my users have those 5 CAs in their browser? Much better to use the existing DNS infrastructure (that all 5 of them would likely be using for their validation anyway), and not have to pay anyone anything. - Mike