Re: Certificate authentication

[Damien Miller <djm%mindrot.org@localhost>]

Peter Gutmann wrote:

> which never appeard in the RFC.  There's a  followup in Jan'02 asking why it's
> not present yet, and several other ones indicating that no two people can
> agree on how to do this, including the [editorial comment deleted] suggestion
> to use:
> 
>    The certificate formats based on ssh-rsa extend the public key
>    format to include certificate data:
> 
>      string    "ssh-rsa-x509v3" / "ssh-rsa-spki" / "ssh-rsa-pgp"
>      mpint     e
>      mpint     n
>      string    certificate

IIRC it was I that suggested this encoding and then promptly retracted
it after a good night's sleep. I had hoped that this bit of embassasment
would lay undisturbed in the list archives. Anyway:

- I think that the certificate hostkeys or userauth should be specified
in separate drafts.

- I'd prefer that no more changes be made to the current drafts so as
not to (yet again) delay them.

- If changes absolutely have to be made, then I would prefer the current
wording around certificate encoding to be converted to references to
external specifications.

- I don't think that the current wording should just be deleted, as at
least one implementation (ssh.com, and possibly people who are using
patched OpenSSH) does use host-key certificates with the specified
encoding name.

-d