OT: (or is it?) Interesting take on PKI and security

[Tim Bogart]

That's my perspective... like it or not.  It's still true.

Basics don't change.

t




________________________________
From: Lisa Kachold <lisakachold at obnosis.com>
To: Main PLUG discussion list <plug-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
Sent: Fri, July 2, 2010 5:30:00 PM
Subject: Re: OT: (or is it?) Interesting take on PKI and security




On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 8:00 PM, Tim Bogart <timbogart at yahoo.com> wrote:

All,
>
>
>This is a perfectly crystallized
>description of views I espoused in a book I wrote 3 years ago which
>didn't get published.  I did an entire chapter on PKI versus
>circle of trust.  What's the difference between the two. 
>Fundamentally, it's philosophy, and Ellison and Schnier said it
>best.  "Who do you trust?"  Public Key
>Infrastructure is largely adopted by large firms who have a burning
>desire to centralize the process.  Have you ever met a manager
>or executive that didn't have an inclination toward wanting to have
>iron fisted control over a process or system?  PKI provides that
>control, and that makes them feel good.  Circle of trust
>decentralizes the control and allows anybody in an organization to
>sign keys.  This places the onus of inquiry on the user to
>validate or verify signatures independently.  And in my
>estimation, from a security perspective, this is a good thing. 
>The circle of trust can be compared to the play or movie called “Six
>Degrees of Separation.”  It goes like this... Do you know the Pope?
> Probably not.  But how many acquaintances do you think you have
>between yourself and the Pope?  Well, let's assume you know me,
>that's one.  I know Vint Cerf, that's two.  Vint Cerf knows George
>Bush, that's three.  And President Bush knows the Pope, that's four. 
>So, if you knew me, there would be four degrees of separation between
>you and the Pope.  I'm not going to go into whether you trust George
>Bush, or the Pope, or me for that matter, but I think you see how it
>works.  In a large Corporation like Verizon, or the US Military,
>there's an echelon of command that dictates who you should trust. 
>But is that the best way to go?  I say no.  Not from a security
>perspective.  Independent validation of credentials is always
>preferable to centralization in this scenario because if there is a
>breakdown in the chain of trust with the PKI model, it can be
>catastrophic.  If there is a breakdown in the chain of trust in a
>circle of trust system, it's recoverable because there is more than a
>single path of trust.  It's comparable to the very reason the
>Internet and packet switched networks were developed by DARPA.  If a
>catastrophic event took out a major telecommunications switch,
>rerouting calls would be very time consuming and sometimes impossible
>in a circuit switched network.  Whereas with a packet switched
>network, the packets containing the call information would be
>rerouted around the damaged segment or segments automatically. 
>That's what the Internet was invented for in the first place (read
>“Where Wizards Stay Up Late.  The Origins of the Internet”
>by Katie Hafner and Mathew Lyon, ISBN 0684812010, Library of Congress
>#TK5105.875.I57 H338 1996 ). 
>
>
>
>“But management needs central
>control!”  They can still have it with circle of trust.  They can
>poison pill any key set they wish.  They can even require key
>signatures that will allow management or agents thereof to open
>encrypted emails.  It's all in the architecture and how it's
>administered.  I worked for a company that used circle of trust and
>did just that.  But the skeleton keys weren't held by one entity.   
>The company had a master or skeleton key and could open an encrypted
>document or email.  The key to the security in this scenario was the
>process.  There was a formalized request and approval process that
>was required with certain checks and balances in place to ensure the
>act of breaching and encrypted transmission wasn't abused by a single
>person, like launching a missile from a submarine.
>
>
>Anyway, I could go on and on.  But I
>won't bore you.  Suffice to say that Bruce and Carl are absolutely
>correct.
>
>
>BTW... get the book.  It starts out a
>bit slow but there's all kinds of good stuff in there, like who's
>responsible for making the first router work, who's idea was it to
>fund it initially? Who came up with the RFC system? Who's responsible
>for the @ in email addresses and all kinds of good stuff.  It pays to
>know your history, and this book's got a bunch of it.
>My $0.02
>
>t
>
>
>
>
________________________________
 From: Mike Schwartz <schwartz at acm.org>
>To: PLUG-discuss mailing list <plug-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
>Cc: Mike L Schwartz <schwartz at acm.org>
>Sent: Thu, July 1, 2010 6:36:12 PM
>Subject: OT: (or is it?) Interesting take on PKI and security
>
>
>Interesting take on PKI and security 
>http://www.schneier.com/paper-pki-ft.txt
>a favorite take-away quote, from it:
>"[...] security is very difficult, both to understand and to implement. "
>(that's from the 2nd sentence, of about the 4th-to-last paragraph). ...something to think about...
>-- 
>Mike Schwartz    
>Glendale  AZ 
>schwartz at acm.org
>
>

Tim, 

Useless history!  Better yet play with PK yourself, setup sendmail with DKIM keys, and play with DNS to understand various RFCs.  

I can't get my brain trivia tables to index history, unless it's music history or art history?

-- 
Office: (480)307-8707
AT&T: (503)754-4452 


      
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