this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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Can we at least admit that requiring CAs is not how ecryption in Internet should work? Just FYI there is already distributed public key infrastructure: DNS(DNSSEC).
You gotta love confident statements that don’t stand to scrutiny.
DNSSEC keys are signed in the same recursive manner SSL certificates are. If I, as a government, block your access to root servers and provide you my own servers, I can spoof anything I want. It’s literally the same bloody problem.
Chain of trust doesn’t disappear just because you use a new acronym.
That's why I said there is already there is already distributed PKI.
The thing with SSL, for you, as a government, one of 142 root certificates is enough to spoof on any domain, while DNS has only one root certificate and good luck getting that. And if you don't trust DNS, then who you even trust then? DNS is how major CAs check if you really own that domain. Because, you know, domains are part of DNS. Shocking, I know.
Or you can use public keys as addresses somewhere like I2P.
I described a route to spoof DNS root authority that Russia and China can use already. Single root is not an advantage, it’s merely a different kind of implementation with different attack vectors.
When it comes to security, it is better to have multiple different implementations coalesce at a point of service delivery, than have a single source of truth. If everything is delivered via DNS, there’s your tasty target for a capable adversary. If there are multiple verification mechanisms, it’s easier to tailor an attack for a specific target.
I want cryptographic infrastructure I rely on to be the last resort for anyone capable of dealing with it.
This is not what they are doing. They cannot spoof root authority because they don't have private keys. They send unsigned replies which clients with DNSSEC will reject and client without will show blocked banner. Unless client uses DNSCrypt.
As I said this news again brought up problem of CAs capable of signing any certificate in any domain. You need only one of 142 private to spoof any certificate. And as I already said, CAs already need to trust DNS. So right now we are in position, where we should trust that DNS and all 142 CAs aren't lying. If any of those 143 enities lie, all that (in)security breaks.