Well, if they were pointless Google wouldn't even hand you a subset of revoked certificates. The fact that they hand you a subset of revoked certificates from participating CA's makes their solution worse than the disease, frankly.
It might be ok if used in addition to checking revocation lists. However why should a bank get to have their certificate in the crlset but a saas provider not? Or do you really trust Google there?
Frankly Adam doesn't really believe revocation is pointless. If he did, he wouldn't even suggest that sending a valuable subset of certificates to the browser in a batch is any sort of solution at all. All that does, though, is create a two-class secure internet: those entities Google deems worth distributing revocation information for and those not. That isn't a solution to anything.
Online revocation is pointless. It sounds like you didn't actually read the article, but are happy to slam the one team on the Internet that has given serious consideration to the obviously-broken SSL revocation system. Can I ask you to take a breath and reread the article?
So is getting a subset of revoked certs Google deems "valuable." In fact, that may be even more dangerous since it establishes first class secure sites vs everyone else.
Why should Yahoo's cert revocatins get in the CRLsets but not less well known sites? How is that less broken than online revocation?
Keep in mind, my big objection is:
Google did not distribute our certificate vocation in their CRLSet, presumably because we weren't large enough. That is not a fix for anything.
Ok, fair enough. I am just making sure my objection to Google's approach is clear.
I would be OK if they guaranteed complete CRLsets from all participating CA's. Since they don't, their solution is more broken than what they are replacing.
So I acknowledge that online revocation is problematic. I just think the crlset approach is an order of magnitude worse when the crlset is a subset of revoked entries sent by the ca.
Respectfully, I think an accurate summary of your argument is that you would rather pretend to be secure using broken online revocation checks than to have to stomach the Chromium team providing a marginal amount of actual security by deciding which sites are and aren't worthy of protection.
It might be ok if used in addition to checking revocation lists. However why should a bank get to have their certificate in the crlset but a saas provider not? Or do you really trust Google there?
Frankly Adam doesn't really believe revocation is pointless. If he did, he wouldn't even suggest that sending a valuable subset of certificates to the browser in a batch is any sort of solution at all. All that does, though, is create a two-class secure internet: those entities Google deems worth distributing revocation information for and those not. That isn't a solution to anything.