[Discuss] Why the dislike of X.509?

[warlord at MIT.EDU (Derek Atkins)]

Richard Pieri <richard.pieri at gmail.com> writes:

> On 8/26/2014 10:37 AM, markw at mohawksoft.com wrote:
>> *any* shared or distributed authority has the same issue.
>
> Shared is not distributed. Shared means more than one entity has
> authority. Each entity is a point of compromise for the entire system.
>
> Distributed means no single entity has authority; a quorum or a
> unanimous consensus is required. Compromise of one entity does not
> compromise the entire system.

So where does DNS come in?  I think most DNS experts would define it as
a "distributed" system.  However there *is* a single entity that has
authority -- the root servers.  Compromise of that would compromise the
whole DNS system.  However there are watchdogs all over the world whose
role is preventing that.

I would argue that it's not a clear dichotomy between "shared" and
"distributed".

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
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