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Are we self-sovereign PKI yet?

buffrr.dev

11–20 of 92 posts

Re: Are we self-sovereign PKI yet?

#11
> two parties have to be able to agree on which key grace@key is bound to without consulting anyone in particular. They need a shared, append-only record of which names exist and which keys they belong to. And that record can’t have a signing key to steal, an operator to coerce, or a committee to lobby

Having studied this problem space for some time, this is also my read of what the ultimate solution requires. That said, as the author also mentions, the biggest challenges in this paradigm are social, not necessarily technical. Therefore, I think the new solution requires a protocol approach rather than just a technical standard or implementation.

The KERI protocol (https://keri.one/) has been the best attempt I've seen at this. They focus on a similar concept, persistent long lasting identifiers built on top of cryptographic primitives, but they do so with a microledger approach than a monolithic blockchain as the root. The core primitive is what is known as a Key Event Log which tracks verified attestations of key transactions such as issuance, revocation, delegation, rotation, interaction, and so on. It is a very powerful concept that then facilitates stronger trust assumptions via end-to-end verification. And maybe most importantly, enables some very clean key management procedures that then can anchor the protocol behavior needed to optimize for those social challenges discussed earlier.

Regardless, adoption of KERI and other solutions like Spaces has not been very productive. I fear we've reached a tipping point where the external threats are too large now and top-down authoritarian-like solutions that address these issues head on will be the winners, leaving out dociety with very poor tradeoffs in such a critical area.

https://keri.one/

Re: Are we self-sovereign PKI yet?

#12
post #6

> The same key, in every app, for every recipient. Not assignable to anyone else, not revocable, not subject to suspension. Yours forever. This is impractical and the opposite of what we want. It's a required ID to use the internet, monitored by governments, tracked by corporations, and forever unchanging. What we need is a system that allows people to easily create new IDs, that updates contacts that people choose.…

> What we need is a system that allows people to easily create new IDs, that updates contacts that people choose.

> Contacts would need to be always online.

That also sounds impractical.

> It's a required ID to use the internet

How does any of that follow? Having a reusable self-sovereign ID format for those scenarios where people want to share it is very different from having an authority-issued ID format that's mandatory for some interaction.

As a concrete example: I have an iMessage (CKV), Signal, WhatsApp, and GPG identity key, but I don't need to provide any of them when ordering pizza online. But what I can't do is choosing to use the same key for my same number on both e.g. Signal and iMessage to make it easier for people to switch between messengers without having to re-verify me.

A hypothetical shared key format would fix that, but would (hopefully!) still allow me to create multiple keys/identities for multiple contexts, and to not provide any persistent identity when it's not necessary.

Re: Are we self-sovereign PKI yet?

#13
Everyone is trying so hard to re-invent PGP, while parroting that PGP is dead because some security influencers said so.

Well, there is a LOT of ongoing PGP modernization work on both specifications and implementations in recent years and my team and I at Distrust will be publishing a writeup on it any day now, as well as organizing yet another key generation and signing party in San Francisco next month.

PGP is not going away any time soon, and it is more relevant than ever.

For now check out this post about how we use it to build trust in the Linux ecosystem today: https://kron.fi/en/posts/stagex-web-of-trust/

Re: Are we self-sovereign PKI yet?

#14
post #2

Great concise description of the problem. As for the solution, it seems to explicitly not address recovery of lost keys/identities, which is however exactly the part that makes this hard for regular users. That, and general name confusion attacks, I suppose: "I'm lxgr17@key, yeah, don't ask about the first 16. Oh also make sure 'key' is not the one with the Georgian lowercase e in the middle, that one's an impostor.…

Wait, actually, let me quickly...send it over in Whatsapp

Re: Are we self-sovereign PKI yet?

#15
post #13

Everyone is trying so hard to re-invent PGP, while parroting that PGP is dead because some security influencers said so. Well, there is a LOT of ongoing PGP modernization work on both specifications and implementations in recent years and my team and I at Distrust will be publishing a writeup on it any day now, as well as organizing yet another key generation and signing party in San Francisco next month. PGP is not…

> Everyone is trying so hard to re-invent PGP

Which bit of PGP?

Re: Are we self-sovereign PKI yet?

#16
I am co-founding a project that somewhat addresses some of this. The basis of it is a decentralized trust system built using human-readable names (think domain names), native mTLS, and post-quantum cryptography. This removes two barriers we've found: inability to easily confirm hashes (i.e. DIDs or fingerprints) and relying on a centralized trust giver (i.e. central certificate authorities).

Happy to share more if anyone is interested in this space: hn@sepositus.com. We're in shadow mode so not much public material at this point (although we do have a full PoC).

Re: Are we self-sovereign PKI yet?

#17
> Spaces takes this shape. (Disclosure: I work on it.) Issued names live in a binary Merkle trie. The root of that trie is committed to Bitcoin’s chain

Who can update and publish the merkle trie onto the blockchain? Is it only Spaces themselves who can? If so, this seems a little inferior to more direct blockchain solutions like the Ethereum Name Service which exists as a smart contract on a blockchain that anyone can use directly.

Re: Are we self-sovereign PKI yet?

#18
post #15
post #13

Everyone is trying so hard to re-invent PGP, while parroting that PGP is dead because some security influencers said so. Well, there is a LOT of ongoing PGP modernization work on both specifications and implementations in recent years and my team and I at Distrust will be publishing a writeup on it any day now, as well as organizing yet another key generation and signing party in San Francisco next month. PGP is not…

> Everyone is trying so hard to re-invent PGP Which bit of PGP?

Self-sovereign PKI identity, key discovery, file encryption, artifact, code, review signing, security disclosures, boot signing etc etc.

Re: Are we self-sovereign PKI yet?

#20
post #18
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone is trying so hard to re-invent PGP Which bit of PGP?

Self-sovereign PKI identity, key discovery, file encryption, artifact, code, review signing, security disclosures, boot signing etc etc.

Who's reinventing a tool that can do all that?
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