Re: [perpass] Draft charter for a Transparency Working Group

[Ben Laurie <[e-mail]>]

On 7 January 2014 18:19, Stephen Kent <[e-mail]> wrote:
> Ben,
>
>
>>> The text describing how 6962 uses Merkle trees is good. I think the
>>> phrase "prove its own correctness" is way too broad. The example
>>> you cite shows how to demonstrate internal consistency for a log,
>>> and to enable third parties to verify certain lob properties. That
>>> is much narrower than what the term "correctness" implies.
>>
>> How about, instead of "can prove its own correctness
>> cryptographically", we say "allows efficient verification of
>> behaviour"?
>>
> I still find that phase vague. What sort of behavior is being
> verified? Isn't the behavior amenable to verification a function
> of the context details? For example, a self-signed cert is
> an example of a crypto construct that allows an RP to verify a few
> aspect of its "behavior"
>      - the public key contained within the cert is matched to the
>        private key used to sign it.
>     - the cert content was not modified after it was signed
>
> But most of the other semantics of CA-issued certs are not
> verified by this construct.

As Stephen Farrell has pointed out, therightkey is the correct list
for discussion. I have posted a revised charter there which phrases
this in yet another way. See if you prefer that version.

>
> Steve