19th century PKI

Over the last few years more and more reports have been published claiming that PKI was fundamentally flawed.  The failure of the Dutch CA DigiNotar is widely claimed to be the final proof.  But I disagree.  The problems with PKI fall into two categories: "you're doing it wrong"; and "you're using it wrong".  Neither of these have anything to do with the fundamental underpinning cryptography.

The problem that PKI is intended to address is trust.  I can trust what you say if someone I trust authorises what you say.  It really is that simple to say, and at the same time fiendishly complicated to implement correctly.

It may surprise you to know that we've been doing PKI since the end of the 19th century, in the role of Justice of the Peace.  This is a person who will witness a signature on an official document.  The receiver of the document trusts that the document is genuine as they trust the JP, and the JP saw you sign it.

However just like current PKI problems, there are identical problems in the 19th century version.  When I had a legal document witnessed at the local public library, the JP had no way of validating that the form I was signing was genuine.  He also made no effort to validate that what I signed was really my signature, nor that I was the person referenced on the form - which makes sense as there is no way he could have done that anyway.

What he asserted is that a real person made a real mark on a real piece of paper.  Everything else is covered by laws against fraud.  And this has worked for more than 100 years, and continues to work today.

If we used current PKI to do only this - assert that a real computer made a real communication at a definite time, everything would be fine.  But we don't.  We want to know which computer, and so ask questions about identity, and then act surprised when the implementations fail us.

PKI is the answer.  It's the question that's wrong.

Phil Kernick Chief Technology Officer
@philkernick www.cqr.com