[Infowarrior] - Schneier: The Legality of the Certificate Authority Trust Model

[Richard Forno]

The Legality of the Certificate Authority Trust Model

Interesting research:

We looked at the standard legal documents issued by the certificate authorities or "CAs," including exemplar Subscriber Agreements (agreements between CAs and website operators); "Certification Practice Statements" (statements by CAs outlining their business practices); and Relying Party Agreements (purported agreements between CAs and "relying parties," such as end-users). What we found was surprising:

	• "Relying Party Agreements" purport to bind end-users to their terms despite the apparent absence of any mechanism to either affirmatively alert the end-user as to the existence of the supposed Agreements or afford the end-user an opportunity to register his or her acceptance or rejection of the Agreements' terms 

	• Certification Practice Statements that suffer from the same problem (i.e. no affirmative notice to the end-user and no meaningful opportunity for acceptance or rejection of terms)

There were other issues as well. For example, the Relying Party Agreements and Certification Practice Statements set forth various obligations on the part of end-users (i.e. "relying parties") such as: the requirement that end-users make an independent determination of whether it is reasonable to trust a website offering a secure connection (isn't that the whole point of having a CA, so that the end-user doesn't have to do that?); the requirement that the end-user be familiar with the crypto software and processes used to carry out the authentication process; and the end-user's duty to indemnify and hold harmless the CA in the event of legal claims by third parties.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/01/the_legality_of.html