Re: OpenSSH certified keys

[Konstantin Andreev <andreev%swemel.ru@localhost>]

On 16.03.10 20:19, Damien Miller wrote:

> OpenSSH 5.4p1 introduced a novel, lightweight certificate format for
> user and host keys. These were designed to reuse SSH wire-encoding and
> signature primitives to minimise the additional attack surface exposed
> pre-auth. In particular, we are not comfortable with the complexity
> (syntactically or sematically) of X.509.

I am not a security expert.

I can only rely on protocols/solutions, that trustworthy experts assert to be secure, or authoritative government institution certifies as secure.

What have I from this point of view ?

I can be sure that X.509 PKIX was designed and reviewed by the best experts in the industry. I can be sure, that all details I have never heard about were taken into account. There are approved guides which help me reach the highest level of the X.509 security.

Can I be sure that security protocol, designed by self-taught security experts, reaches that level of security or has not hidden defects? Nope.

IMO, being "not comfortable" with X.509 features is not enough to reimplement the wheel...

Best regards,
--
Konstantin Andreev, software engineer.
Swemel JSC.