On 11/02/2011 12:08 PM, al_9x@yahoo.com wrote:
On 11/2/2011 6:39 AM, Ludolf Holzheid wrote:
On Wed, 2011-11-02 05:41:57 -0400, al_9x@yahoo.com wrote:
The concept of trusted server certs (as opposed to trusted authority certs) is well established. Firefox cert manager, for example, has a servers tab where you can import and trust specific server certs (self signed and not)
And Firefox accepts such certificates even if they can't be validated (and thus are to be considered invalid)?I would regard this as a bug or at least as a design flaw...
FWIW: Yes, that's what web browsers do. That's because they live in the world of the WWW, which adopted HTTP+SSL primarily as a means to achieve secrecy (encryption) and would (well, most of them) happily drop authentication (server certs) on the floor *if only* the SSL standards allowed that. Self-signed server certs created automagically the first time you start your newly installed webserver software express the same stance. In this notion, the server key+cert pair *really* is nothing but a glorified challenge-response mechanism, no third parties required.
For the exact same reason, Firefox et.al. do *not* use OpenSSL or any work derived thereof as their SSL engine, do not identify certificates the same way OpenSSL does (hash numbers), etc. etc..
They *are* validated, by the user's explicit grant of trust to the imported server cert. The flaw is not in Firefox but your understanding of trust. The reason you walk the trust chain to a trusted root is because normally (standard PKI model) you don't trust individual server certs, but only CA roots. However if (for whatever reason) you do explicitly trust a server cert, no further validation is needed.
Whether "the PKI model" ***ALLOWS*** overlaying a Web of Trust in addition to the hierarchical structure is debatable. As I already mentioned, not going through the CA certs effectively disables (automated) CRL checking, which is a pretty dubious "improvement".
And since I'm already rephrasing myself, I *still* think that OpenSSL based software - like stunnel - actually can't do squat to implement your proposed behavior.
Regards, J. Bern