Re: Digital Sigs (was IS: ATTN: List Mom: Unnecessary smime attachments)
Re: Digital Sigs (was IS: ATTN: List Mom: Unnecessary smime attachments)
- Subject: Re: Digital Sigs (was IS: ATTN: List Mom: Unnecessary smime attachments)
- From: Sander Tekelenburg <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 23:55:30 +0200
At 11:12 -0500 UTC, on 2004/09/13, John C. Welch wrote:
> On 9/13/04 10:45 AM, "Sander Tekelenburg" <email@hidden> wrote:
>
>> . Such cases would have far
>> less damaging potential if signing and verifying digital sigs would be the
>> standard thing to do.
>
> True, but for that to happen, the Versign scam is going to have to come to
> an end.
Sure, that should end. But it is only remotely related.
Digital signature verification is not equal to identity verification. People
are mixing the two up far too often. Suppose the entity "Sander Tekelenburg
<email@hidden>" always signs all its messages. Then one day there is
reason to believe someone else poses as that entity. Verification of the sig
can make clear whether a message can be trusted to be from that entity or not.
Whether the entity's real name is Sander Tekelenburg is another issue. (Sure,
it can also be useful, but it's another issue.) Digital sigs can offer that,
by having a trusted party sign keys. That can be useful, but in technical
terms it is only an application of digital signatures, not an embedded
feature.
In fact it is good that it is another issue. There are legitimate situations
conceivable wherein it is important to be able to verify a sig, but equally
important that the owner of the signing key can remain anonymous. (Consider
political dissidents handing over information to Amnesty International, or
something like that. Provided the information itself is reliable/convincing,
its source can remain anonymous and thus have an opportunity to uncover more
- or at least just survive...)
--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>
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