Recently, the Shmoo Group discovered that Firefox is vulnerable to precisely the exploit that i predicted in my 2002 paper—Ping

➡

The central point of my essay on the petname toolbar is that phishing is the result of name conflation.—Tyler

➡

So how, in this system, does the user come to trust Paypal (as opposed to someone pretending to be Paypal)?—Ben

➡

If I’m understanding the discussion so far, I think the answer is that the issue of trust is separate from the issue of identity.—Jed

➡

Indeed, but I am no closer to understanding how the user ever gets to a state where they can do anything useful.—Ben

➡

I gave some examples in my next message on this topic. Perhaps you could address them.—Jed

➡

I agree it solves the problem of confusable URLs.—Ben

➡

What don’t you believe is practical?—Jed

➡

Let’s say I start with actually visiting my bank, and getting the fingerprint of their cert. I then tediously type that into my machine.—Ben

➡

Forget the tedious typing. You give them your smart card (or something like) and they add a Petname binding to it.—Jed

➡

I’m sorry to be such a curmudgeon here, but-- this doesn’t sound like a solution I can get terribly excited about.—David

➡

To communicate about third parties, we need to first securely agree on a common semantics. The problem of secure general agreement is a property rights problem, and particular a property titles problem. It’s like agreeing on who owns the land, and what are its boundaries. I’ve tackled this problem in depth at <szabo.best.vwh.net> More information on the distributed database system that the secure title system is based on can be found at <szabo.best.vwh.net>—szabo

➡

Please explain how I can sue someone in China from Canada.—Sandro

➡

Sometimes you can’t, and a good "sue me here" certificate system would usually prevent a legally unreachable web site from getting "you can sue me in—szabo

➡

I suspect that it is workable but with increased effort; maintaining a global namespace is increasingly difficult the larger it becomes. Incidentally, there is no reason this "certificate as token of legal jurisdiction" system cannot be implemented in conjunction with the petname system. Personally, I would feel even more comfortable with an introduction to Paypal from a friend *and* a visible identifier indicating that this Paypal is also a registered legal entity in Canada (signed by the government, or governement approved CA, for instance). I would initially award a greater degree of trust to such a "Paypal" because of the legal recourse I would have at my disposal.—Sandro