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by beagle3 4327 days ago
If I understand correctly, namecoin is a distributed DNS replacement. Is there a way it addresses impersonation (e.g. MITM?), if so, can you please point me at documentation?

DNS does not address it, and even DNSSEC does not (if you can forge the certificate, and you can mitm the traffic - which state actors are all capable of - then it doesn't matter that you can't forge the DNS response itself).
1 comments
aianus 4327 days ago
You can place your own self-signed public key in your namecoin record. There is no longer any need for certificate authorities which can be coerced into forging certificates.
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beagle3 4327 days ago
Well, if this is properly supported by software using namecoin for DNS resolution, then - yes, this may work. The proof of the pudding, however, will arrive once it's eaten. I am not familiar with namecoin to point where the potential problems are, but do note that the failure of CAs is not in the cryptography but rather in the trust model. In modern cryptography, the problems are almost always with the practice, not with the theory.
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rakoo 4327 days ago
> software using namecoin for DNS resolution

Actually, it should be the other way around: dnschain [0] bridges DNS resolution and namecoin, so there's no need to modify existing software.

[0] https://github.com/okTurtles/dnschain

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beagle3 4327 days ago
Cool! wasn't aware of it.
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