On 3/11/2014 03:10, Alan Braggins wrote:
On 09/03/14 22:59, Raphael Wegmann wrote:
What about creating a distributed hash-table, where we could count
collectively, which public-key has been used by a particular server
how often?
When I visit amazon.com and my browser tells me, that I am the only
one who got that public-key I'm having, I know immediately, that
I am not really communicating with Amazon.
If an MITM attack is pointing you at a fake Amazon, how are you going
to ensure the same attacker isn't going to show you a fake hash-table?
One possible answer is certificate pinning, but if you've used
Amazon.com before, certificate pinning can warn you it's using a
different key (and different CA) from last time without the table.
Of course, certificate pinning is orthogonal to the way certificates are
verified in PKIX.
PKIX allows plenty of neat things, like using different certificates
with different keys on different hosts, renewing the certificate with a
different, key, etc.
And load-balancers can make it impossible to tell which backend you are
actually talking to.
I'm not saying Amazon or other companies are doing those things, but
they are all perfectly legal to do in PKIX, but would trip so-called
"certificate pinning".
One could argue PKIX is too powerful and too complex, but it's the
standard we have.
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