[simias]

It was supposed to be a "proof of stake" originally I suppose, if a company was caught doing shady thing it would lose its CA status so they're incentivized not to do so. Sort of like internet notaries.

That might have worked decently in the early internet but it does seem seriously flawed with the current stakes.

That being said, what's the alternative? TOFU? Web of Trust? Those have massive security implications as well. They have the advantage of putting the user back in control but given that the vast majority of the people using the web today doesn't have a deep understanding of the underlying technology and security model I don't see how this wouldn't end up in a massive catastrophe.

It's a tough problem to solve.

[ocdtrekkie]

The problem is a lot of companies have done shady things and they are still participating in PKI. And a huge issue is that I can't pick my trustworthy parties: For instance, I do not trust Google. But a huge portion of the web won't work unless my browser assumes Google can issue certs for any domain in the world. I also don't trust a half a dozen CAs in countries I don't deal with and would rather prefer not have access to at all. When a Chinese PKI provider fails, I first wonder why I'm even trusting these CAs to begin with.

I'd prefer a system backed by DNS, and based on verifying the ownership of domains and the authorized DNS provider for that domain. Presumably, in my example, the only domains Google would be authorized to secure would be domains provided via Google's DNS and domain products.

[tialaramex]

> For instance, I do not trust Google. But a huge portion of the web won't work unless my browser assumes Google can issue certs for any domain in the world.

Um no. Google's four production roots (GTS Root R1 through R4) are essentially dormant. You could (but probably shouldn't) manually distrust these roots with no impact.