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Hello Blue Sky! Check out first post in my series on transparency systems. educatedguesswork.org/posts/transp...

Most real-world authentication protocols rely on some kind of trusted authentication service to attest to endpoint identities. The obvious problem here is the word "trusted"; if the authentication service misbehaves, then the whole system breaks down.

15/12/23, 6:13 pm1 repost0 likes

When paired with some fairly public failures by WebPKI certificate authorities, this creates an obvious problem.

The solution that the ecosystem has converged on is something called a "transparency system", and in the case of the WebPKI "certificate transparency". Instead of trying to prevent misbehavior by CAs, a transparency system tries to make it detectable.

The basic idea is to require every certificate has to be published, thus allowing sites -- or services on their behalf -- to detect (at least in principle) when a certificate has been misissued

A misissued certificate can be revoked, and, if investigation reveals improper practices, browsers might choose to distrust the CA, thus rendering all of its certificates invalid.