Subject: [websec] FYI: related drafts on securing TSL and certificates

From: Tobias Gondrom <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 05:48:08 +0000

Hello,

<hat="individual">

this is only fyi, but possibly noteworthy:
recently I came across two other articles aiming at making TLS/SSL more 
secure:
1. a draft from Ben Laurie and Adam Langley "Certificate Authority 
Transparency and Auditability"
www.links.org/files/CertificateAuthorityTransparencyandAuditability.pdf

2. and another proposal from EFF on "Sovereign Keys: A Proposal to Make 
HTTPS and Email More Secure"
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/11/sovereign-keys-proposal-make-https-and-email-more-secure

To oversimplify, both add some kind of certificate log stored at other 
sources - though differently.
 From my perspective this does not conflict with but could complement 
the current pinning and HSTS approach.

Best regards,

Tobias

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From: Chris Palmer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 12:03:36 -0800

On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 9:48 PM, Tobias Gondrom
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> From my perspective this does not conflict with but could complement the
> current pinning and HSTS approach.

I have been tangentially involved in the SK proposal (I worked with
Peter at EFF), and CT is partly motivated by SK. I *think* I speak for
all of us when I say that we regard public key pinning as a useful
short-term mitigation, but that some kind of public log system is The
Real Solution. I agree there is no conflict, and that the approaches
are complementary. Once The Real Solution is in place, we should be
able to let go of short-term mitigations like pinning.

Whether or not HSTS is "merely" a short-term mitigation that would be
superceded by The Real Solution, I don't know. It might well turn out
that we will always need to distinguish between "HTTPS is available,
and make sure you use the right public keys" and "HTTPS is mandatory,
and make sure you use the right public keys". Obviously, HTTPS should
be universal, making the available/mandatory distinction meaningless.
But until then...

---

From: Adam Langley <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 15:13:33 -0500

On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 3:03 PM, Chris Palmer <[email-masked]> wrote:
> I *think* I speak for
> Real Solution.

I don't believe that there is any conflict between HSTS, pinning and
Certificate Transparency.

Cheers

AGL