Re: From whence we came...

[Steve Hanna <steve.hanna@sun.com>]

Derek Atkins wrote:
> My point is that suggesting that all keys be "certificates (in the
> PGP/X.509 sense of the word)" is doing a disservice to the community.
> You are basically telling SSH and FreeS/WAN to piss off, and I
> believe that is not only unfair but downright wrong. :)

That's certainly not what I intended.

Let me review where I think we are. SSH uses preconfigured keys.
You want a more scalable and less error-prone mechanism for securely
distributing keys. We're discussing various options. The primary
candidates seem to be:

1) storing keys in DNS, authenticated with DNSSEC
2) certificates (X.509, PGP, or whatever), stored in DNS
3) certificates, exchanged in application protocols
4) certificates, stored in some other location (like an LDAP
   directory)

I pointed out that one big disadvantage of solution 1) is that
DNSSEC uses a top-down trust model with a single root. That
may be OK for DNS, but it's a bummer for many other applications
(including SSH, I would suggest).

Would you care to discuss the merits of these various options?

BTW, I expect that SSH (and IPsec) will continue to support
preconfigured keys, no matter what we do. I think that's a
fine thing, for many environments. It doesn't scale well and
it's prone to user error, but that's not a big problem for
a dozen machines with technically savvy administrators.

-Steve