We must be able to be able to transfer our trust to our machines from our actual real world situation. In some cases, we trust (say) a bank because we trust a large ISP to give certificates out for big thing like banks. The PKI Certificate Authority chain deserves the business gets when it arbitrates identity on the global scale.
Sometimes, for a bank, a lawyer, a real estate agent, or an accountant we are using, we sit down and have a face-face conversation at least at the start of our long-term relationship, spending a lot of time to establish that trust relationship, signing such as signing contracts. In this case, we have plenty of time to exchange keys securely as peers with no hierarchical infrastructure.
Sometimes we will trust people because we know them personally, and then we must be able to explain this fact to the computer which acts as our agent. Sometimes we know people because they are part of a family, and we exchange keys within a family context and trust the family web server. Sometimes we know someone or a web site because we are part of an organization, like a university, or we are employees of a company.
My computer (of whatever sort) must allow me to add specific certificates because I have these relationships. It is at the moment a breakage in the system that browser manufacturers are fighting tooth and nail to stop people doing anything useful with an unsigned or a self-signed certificate. This is, with all due respect, playing into the hands of the corporate trust structure, PKI, which of course benefits from being used to convey these trust paths. This is wholly inappropriate for several reasons. One is that actually trusting my family server though the PKI system is an expensive way to go. One is that actually trusting my family server though the PKI system is a misrepresentation of why I trust the family server. The PKI system has many weak points, and in fact is a security liability for me to use it for something where I should be using more intimate key exchange system.
Currently, mit.edu's certificates for working with staff are distributed by MIT to employees and are self-signed. I have a close relationship with MIT, so it is reasonable for me to accept this certificate. I can walk into MIT offices and hold them accountable. They already have issues me with an RFID card and a credit card and all kinds of stuff. I don't need to trust them because of a large set of root servers ion all kinds of countries which have from time been hacked. Unfortunately current rhetoric from browser manufacturers suggests that the user getting the browser to accept an self-signed cert is a horrible violation, and should be stopped. No, it should be enabled, and a great user interface provided for me, the user, to control and review the process.The next two notes go on to explore two ways in which there are issue with the way we model trust, in the gramularity of server-side web applications, and the lack of support for client-side certificates.
This is the second of four related notes: