Certificate Transparency Sites
I may not have said much more about Certificate Transparency, but we’ve been working on it. So, those interested in following along (or joining in) are welcome to look at…
Website.
Mailing list.
Code repository.
The code repository also inc...
Fixing CAs
Adam Langley and I have a proposal to bolster up the rather fragile Certificate Authority infrastructure.
TL;DNR: certificates are registered in a public audit log. Servers present proofs that their certificate is registered, along with the certificate itself. Clients check these proofs and domain owners monitor the logs. If a CA mis-issues a certificate then either
There...
Open Source Transcription Software Developer
Since we set up FreeBMD, FreeREG and FreeCEN things have come a long way, and so we’re revisiting how we do transcription. Those great guys at Zooniverse have released their Scribe transcription software, which they developed to use with Old Weather and Ancient Lives (and more to come), as open source.
We are working with them...
Open Source Transcription Software Developer
Since we set up FreeBMD, FreeREG and FreeCEN things have come a long way, and so we’re revisiting how we do transcription. Those great guys at Zooniverse have released their Scribe transcription software, which they developed to use with Old Weather and Ancient Lives (and more to come), as open source.
We are working with them...
Lessons Not Learned
Anyone who has not had their head under a rock knows about the DigiNotar fiasco.
And those who’ve been paying attention will also know that DigiNotar’s failure is only the most recent in a long series of proofs of what we’ve known for a long time: Certificate Authorities are nothing but a money-making scam. They provide...
DNSSEC on the Google Certificate Catalog
I mentioned my work on the Google Certificate Catalog a while back. Now I’ve updated it to sign responses with DNSSEC.
I also updated the command-line utility to verify DNSSEC responses – and added a little utility to fetch the root DNSSEC ...
An Efficient and Practical Distributed Currency
Now that I’ve said what I don’t like about Bitcoin, it’s time to talk about efficient alternatives.
In my previous paper on the subject I amused myself by hypothesizing an efficient alternative to Bitcoin based on whatever mechanism it uses to achieve consensus on checkpoints. Whilst this is fun, it is pretty clear that no such...
Decentralised Currencies Are Probably Impossible (But Let’s At Least Make Them Efficient)
How time flies. Following my admittedly somewhat rambling posts on Bitcoin, I decided to write a proper paper about the problem. So, here’s a preprint of “Decentralised Currencies Are Probably Impossible (But Let’s At Least Make Them Efficient)”. It’s short! Enjoy.
I may submit this to a conference, I haven’t decided yet. Suggestions of where are...
Bitcoin is Slow Motion
OK, let’s approach this from another angle.
The core problem Bitcoin tries to solve is how to get consensus in a continuously changing, free-for-all group. It “solves” this essentially insoluble problem by making everyone walk through treacle, so it’s always evident who is in front.
But the problem is, it isn’t really evident. Slowing everyone down doesn’t...
Bitcoin 2
Well, that got a flood of comments.
Suppose I take 20 £5 notes, burn them and offer you a certificate for the smoke for £101. Would you buy the certificate?
This is the value proposition of Bitcoin. I don’t get it. How does that make sense? Why would you burn £100 worth of non-renewable resources and then...
Bitcoin
A friend alerted to me to a sudden wave of excitement about Bitcoin.
I have to ask: why? What has changed in the last 10 years to make this work when it didn’t in, say, 1999, when many other related systems (including one of my own) were causing similar excitement? Or in the 20 years since...
Checking SSL Certificates
I mentioned my work on the Google Certificate Catalog recently. One thing I forgot is a command-line utility I wrote to perform the check for you automatically.
You can find it here.
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