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

[Sean Donelan <sean () donelan com>]

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.