Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by troquerre 1990 days ago
The article has a few technical mistakes in it (I've found most publications do that when it comes to a technical subject I'm familiar with...), but in short Handshake is an alternative decentralized DNS root hosted on a blockchain. It aims to replace Certificate Authorities as the root of trust by pinning TLSA keys directly on the blockchain instead of relying on trusted parties for verfication.
2 comments
jrochkind1 1990 days ago
So it aims to replace both DNS (a way of looking up IP address for a hostname) as well as certificate authorities (a way of knowing if the SSL cert being used by your connection is 'good')?

Its an alternative DNS, with a method to use that alternative DNS as a way of authorizing ssl certs too?

link
troquerre 1990 days ago
That's right! Though the infrastructure for HTTPS without CAs on Handshake is still nascent (the community welcomes contributors if you're interested!). This article covers how to set up HTTPS on Handshake using DANE https://medium.com/@ca98am79/how-to-view-dane-tlsa-websites-...
link
koheripbal 1989 days ago
Which blockchain? It's own or will they use Bitcoin's blockchain?
link