Re: [xri] trust vs signatures

[Nat Sakimura <n-sakimura@nri.co.jp>]

As to the "cert" is concerned, though it is currently written to be 
X.509, I think it could equally be something like GPG.
If we separate out the trust portion, that becomes easier and the 
SimpleSign becomes more generic.
(i.e., I like the idea.) Of course then, we need to tell what kind of 
cert it is as well. Perhaps we should indicate it in the XRD/@sigalg.

=nat

Dirk Balfanz wrote:
> I like the idea.
>
> Currently, SimpleSign uses a certuri attribute to point to the cert 
> that can be used to verify the signature. I guess that some profiles 
> would use certificates, while others would not? So perhaps the certuri 
> attribute would have to be replaced by something profile-specific?
>
> Dirk.
>
> On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 9:00 AM, Brian Eaton <beaton@google.com 
> <mailto:beaton@google.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi folks -
>
>     There are two proposals out there on trust and signatures.  I'd like
>     to outline the similarities and differences and figure out which parts
>     of each to adopt.
>
>     One option is Trust Profiles [1].  The Trust Profiles proposal doesn't
>     discuss how to sign or verify documents.  It doesn't even discuss who
>     should sign documents.  Instead it describes a framework for talking
>     about who should sign documents.  The idea is that different XRD
>     applications are going to have their own specific needs around trust.
>     Ideally each application would specify a trust profile that all
>     implementations of that application would use for establishing trust.
>
>     For example, an application dealing exclusively with HTTP authorities
>     might use an HTTP authority trust profile, while applications dealing
>     with other authorities and trust schemes (DNS?  DCE?  XRI?  Individual
>     users?) would define their own trust profiles.  This approach will
>     hopefully let us achieve both interoperability and flexibility.
>
>     The other option is Simple Sign [2].  Simple Sign covers the entire
>     trust process in one go, discussing both the bits and bytes of signing
>     and who should sign which documents.  Simple Sign has the advantage of
>     being simple and concise, but I'm concerned that it lacks the
>     flexibility to deal with different trust schemes: it assumes that all
>     applications will use a single approach for deciding who should sign
>     documents.
>
>     I like the Simple Sign approach to signing.  I'm less enthusiastic
>     about the way Simple Sign talks about who should sign which documents.
>      Section 3.2 of the Simple Sign proposal offers one single rule for
>     signing, but I'm pretty sure that one rule won't work for lots of
>     applications.  What are those applications going to do for trust?
>
>     I'd like to handle this by adopting the signing algorithm from Simple
>     Sign (sections 1, 2, and 3.1 from the wiki), but replacing section 3.2
>     of Simple Sign with something more like the Trust Profiles proposal.
>     Hopefully lots of applications will be able to reuse the signing
>     scheme, but replace decisions about trust with their own rules as
>     appropriate.
>
>     Cheers,
>     Brian
>
>     [1] Trust Profiles:
>     http://wiki.oasis-open.org/xri/XrdOne/TrustProfiles
>     [2] Simple Sign: http://wiki.oasis-open.org/xri/XrdOne/SimpleSign
>
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