| Key infrastructure doesn't even emit security anymore. The P in PKI is for painful, and I really doubt that some CA, owned by big corporate entity (microsoft, oracle, ca) wouldn't manipulate the eternal append-only log-file for any given human factor and just re-roll it. There is no benefit in auditing it permanently, like rewarding auditing with payment in bitcoin. A given conglomerate CA would just revoke and reissue client/customer certificates for some reason and that eternal append log-file gets a short restart and everything is fine again, because of OOPPS compromise. No CA ever, would host a eternal append-only log-file where you can simply point at and tell: I told you so. It is simply beneficial for any CA to deploy compromising evidence, just in case, of OOPPS compromise. You sure know whom to blame. It is not beneficial for a given CA (usa) to allow any other CA (china) to forever store their certificates and make you pay for it. There is no benefit in eternal log-hoarding for PKI, and they make you pay it. There is no benefit in it for customers even, because you cant even store that log, retrieve that log or even process it as an individual. I am at a point where I would try web of trust with unicorns, raindows and flying cats before trying again and again with PKI by taking something from virtual currencies and attach it to PKI. Certificate Transparency is like Chrome, it is not build to let you or me delete, or remove CA-Certificates, we may dislike for any given reason, or just because we can. I am at a point were I really conclude that taking away certificates or keys and delegate them, is the worst idea ever. Certificate Transparency is baiscally the same wet-hot idea as in 1994 with PKI:
PKI, nearly twenty years ago: In the perfect PKI world imagined by netscape, there would be no war, only love, because secrets would stay secrets forever and the NSA would still chew on their first intercepted message. Reality check please. CAs have proven not to be reliable trust providers. It is so easy to find the weakest CA and attack and compromise it.
Certificate Transparency won't change that, its not even beneficial for CAs. So lets try web of trust, it hasn't failed us yet, it just wasn't sexy enough. May we need that P in PKI pain to gain something after 20 years. Imagine certificates trust-validated from your nerd friend, facebook group, google circle, 4chan, whom you trust, ymmv. Everthing is better than certificates from the folks that hold your browser, operating system, data, e-mails or docments hostage and make you pay for some binary data blob and logging their failures. |