🚀 go-pugleaf

> The certificate approach of X.500 is not a solution to many security
> problems. In fact it only provides a very crude key distribution
> mechanism. The security work in SC21 is looking for a uch more generic
> solution, in which security information is encoded in a general
> format. One part of that format might be an X.500 certificate, another
> format might look like a Kerberos ticket. X.500 doesn't address who
> generates the information, who consumes the information, how the
> information is protected in different ways, etc, etc.
> At the recent Florence meeting a people from the security and
> directory groups got together to convince the directory people that
> there is a larger security problem and to address the issue of
> securing the directory iteslf.

I think we are having a violent agreement.  I was careful to say that X.500
is the *foundation* upon which problems in distributed system security can
be solved.  Separating encryptions services, authentication services and access
control services is the correct approach, which I assume is the direction that
ISO is taking.  One of the problems with kerberos is that it bundles encryption
service with authentication service, thereby limiting its applicability.
Furthermore, there is a practical bias in kerberos toward access list based
access control, an approach that has significant problems in a distributed
system.  As an aside, I would be interested in learning about the work SC21 is
doing in this area.  Is there anything available from anonymous FTP?

Dan