Cryptography Must Overcome Ui Problems To Be Both Useful And Effective

A great paper to read up on, especially given that Phishing is showing us that the “Trusted Third Party” model as implemented in today’s web browsers is horribly broken.

Don Davis’ Cryptography Articles. Specifically, read “Compliance Defects in Public-Key Cryptography”.

Abstract:
Public-key cryptography has low infrastructural overhead because public-key users bear a substantial but hidden administrative burden. A public-key security system trusts its users to validate each others’ public keys rigorously and to manage their own private keys securely. Both tasks are hard to do well, but public-key security systems lack a centralized infrastructure for enforcing users’ discipline. A “compliance defect” in a cryptosystem is such a rule of operation that is both difficult to follow and unenforceable. This paper presents five compliance defects that are inherent in public-key cryptography; these defects make public-key cryptography more suitable for server-to-server security than for desktop applications.

The slides (78 Kbytes) PDF (78 Kbytes) discuss a topic that the paper only touches upon: the complexity of thoroughly checking a certificate issuance-chain, to see whether any of the certs in the chain have been revoked recently. Even in the best case, this is a surprisingly messy procedure. See slides 12 & 13, and their annotations.