Re: Machine Identity

Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@nic.fr> Tue, 26 February 2008 16:04 UTC

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Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:04:12 +0100
From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@nic.fr>
To: der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
Subject: Re: Machine Identity
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On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 10:41:41AM -0500,
 der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> wrote 
 a message of 20 lines which said:

> > [...]: there is no standard of identity for machines on the Internet.
> 
> > Such an identity should be unique and provable.
> 
> This is extremely hard to do,

OK, let me rewrite it in a more realistic way.

Such an identity should be almost unique (as is a number choosen at
random in a very large space) and the machine should be able to prove
that it indeed "owns" this identity (as is an ID which is the public
part of a cryptographic key).

For me, SSH keys or HIP Host Identifiers fulfill these requirments.