CACert (was Re: [Wolves] A day with the boys from GLLUG)

[Andy Smith]

On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 01:52:00PM +0100, Shane M. Coughlan wrote:
> Andy Smith wrote:
> > Agree, the SSL cert industry is a scam and unfortunately I don't see
> > that changing any time soon.
> 
> Well, I'm not a fan of it...but I would not go so far as to call it a
> scam.  Certs can be really useful for some purposes, and they are often
> relatively cheap.

I'm not denying SSL certs are useful, but the majority of their use
is obtained just by generating your own.

What you supposedly pay for is some other entity to certify that you
really are who you say you are, yet verisign and others at the high
end don't appear to be very diligent at this so it's basically a
cartel between them and the browser vendors to print money.

Anyone who wants to improve on this, what is the greatest barrier to
them doing so?  It's not actually being able to do the job, it's..
money to get in the browsers!

> IMHO we need some form of verification.  SSL certs provide a potential
> avenue, but I'd like to see something else.  Any suggestions anyone?

It needs someone gifted at marketing and business plans and getting
lots of venture capital to work out how to sell this one to
Microsoft and Mozilla first.  The underlying technology does not
seem to matter at all. :(

Sorry to be so cynical!

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