Subject: Re: A $25,000,000,000 PKI Was:Spec. on QC-low-fat & QC-heavy-bio

From: "Anders Rundgren" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1999 06:34:35 +0100

Stefan,
>I totally agree with Steve here.

I am so surpriced :-)

>The approach to let a server manage and use your private keys to sign your
>signatures seams to be bad design for the sake of saving a little
>processing power in the client. It seams even more bad taken into
>consideration that computational power and memory capacity in clients
>become cheaper every day.

1) The problem is that the private keys to a company purchaser cert are
not "yours".  I.e. they are owned by the company that can control their use 100%
if they never leave their secure server.  That is a very good working model.

2) I think that the thin client solution has more with sw distribution which
is a true bottleneck recognized by most of the IT-industry 

>But creating and maintaining a general super secure multi-private-key
>center will not be cheaper and cheaper every day. 

Well, once done it will become cheaper compared to the alternatives.  Why
do you think network-centric computing and thin clients are the new favorites
among IT-managers?  Because these solutions give them both control
and convenience.

<snip>

Initially PKI was about certs and global X500 directories - Did not happen

Now it is zillions of certs distributed in various ways - Slow deployment

So I do really believe there is room for a "third wave"

Anders

---

From: Stephen Kent <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1999 20:29:35 -0400

Anders,

>So I do really believe there is room for a "third wave"

If the "third wave" does not match the PKIX model, you may wish to form a
WG to produces standards suited specifically to it.  The SPKI folks have
made space available.

Steve