RE: [IP] more on Breaking America's grip on the net
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Subject: RE: [IP] more on Breaking America's grip on the net
Author: Christian Huitema <huitema@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 9th October 2005 9:34:34 am
Russell Nelson describes how P2P systems could resolve names like "example.com"
without relying on any centralized database. That is true, but there is the
little problem of security. How can we stop the wrong guys from pretending to
be "example.com" as well? So far, there are few solutions.
One way to ensure "safe peer-to-peer naming" is to publish names that are
self-verifying, e.g. hashes of the public key of the publisher. After resolving
the name, it is easy to verify that the other end is the right one. The problem
is that, instead of names like "example.com", you get names like
"12AE-B456-CD78-9F03". There are applications where that works, but they
clearly belong to the category of "finding back someone you already know".
Another way is to publish something like "example.com", and to use some kind
of X.509 certificate to verify the address after resolution. The problem there
is that one needs to rely on a small set of "well known certification
authorities" to sign the certificate. So, one essentially moves the problem of
name ownership from registration in a top-level-domain database to registration
in a certificate authority's data base. If one wants differentiated controls,
e.g. different authorities for ".com" and ".fr", then one needs to publish the
equivalent of a root file, the list of certification authorities that are
associated with various top-level domains.
I personally believe that a peer-to-peer system would be better than the
current hierarchical design. It may be potentially more robust, although
teething problems are likely to be interesting. It cannot entirely do away with
hierarchies and authorities if we want both "friendly names" and "security".
But it does allow for some decentralization, and it certainly does away with
the fears of "censorship at the root" or "censorship at the top".
-- Christian Huitema
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