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Date:      Fri, 17 Nov 2006 14:29:56 +0100
From:      Daniel Lang <dl@leo.org>
To:        "Wolfgang S. Rupprecht" <wolfgang+gnus200611@dailyplanet.dontspam.wsrcc.com>
Cc:        freebsd-current@freebsd.org, openssh-unix-dev@mindrot.org, tech@openbsd.org
Subject:   Re: OpenSSH Certkey (PKI)
Message-ID:  <20061117132956.GB26343@tortuga.leo.org>
In-Reply-To: <87ac2rjqaf.fsf@arbol.wsrcc.com>
References:  <20061115142820.GB14649@insomnia.benzedrine.cx> <87odr8i53w.fsf@arbol.wsrcc.com> <20061116135627.GA26343@tortuga.leo.org> <87ac2rjqaf.fsf@arbol.wsrcc.com>

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Hi,

Wolfgang S. Rupprecht wrote on Thu, Nov 16, 2006 at 08:43:20AM -0800:
[..]
> Oops. I quoted the wrong section.  I had meant to quote the section
> about the user_certificates.  This is what I meant to cite:
> 
>      +A user certificate is an authorization made by the CA that the
>      +holder of a specific private key may login to the server as a
>      +specific user, without the need of an authorized_keys file being
>      +present. The CA gains the power to grant individual users access
>      +to the server, and users do no longer need to maintain
>      +authorized_keys files of their own.
> 
> I don't see a problem with the host certificates methodology.  (In
> fact I'd love to see the known_hosts files fade away as more hosts
> transition to using host certificates.)

Ok, I see. A user certificate just means that the user is
authenticated, so I agree that the difference between authentication
and authorisation can be mixed up here and becomes blurred.

In fact, it would mean, that you could abandon the authorized_keys
file, but you would still need an "authorized_users" file, that 
would need to contain the DN (or a similar identifier) of the user
that matches the certificate. So not a lot is saved, but things
may become less transparent....

Cheers,
 Daniel



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