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Re: IP Block 99/8 (DHS insanity - offtopic)

  • From: Sean Donelan
  • Date: Tue Apr 24 06:26:12 2007

On Mon, 23 Apr 2007, Chris L. Morrow wrote:
I think the strawman proposals so far were something like:

1) iana has 'root' ca-cert
2) iana signs down certs for RIR's
3) RIR's sign down certs for LIR's
4) LIR's sign down certs for 'users' (where 'users' is probably
address-space users, like corporations or end-sites)

This seemed not-too-insane, and would give ISP/operator type folks that
ability to easily and quickly verify that:

157.242.0.0/16 is in point of fact permitted to originate by the org-id: LMU-1

with some level of authority... It's nothing really more than that.

You can do online or offline verification of a trust chain. RSA, certs, etc are just the math. But the math doesn't change the trust. If the
LIR/RIR directories are poorly maintained, their signatures aren't going to be any better.

The problem in your trust chain above is the LIR's don't actually verify much about the 'users'; and its very easy to spoof the LIRs (i.e. I forgot my password) to change their directory information. And the same
thing will probably be true when you ask LIRs to sign things. I lost my
RSA cert, please sign a new one for "me".

An online chain of RWHOIS delegations or a offline chain of RSA certificates (which you will still need an online CRL check), doesn't
change the problems in the LIRs (or even RIRs or IANA). A lot of math
won't make the answer more authoritative.