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Compliance Defects in Public-Key Cryptography
Don Davis
Abstract
Public-key cryptography has low infrastructural overhead because
public-key users bear a substantial but hidden administrative burden.
A public-key security system trusts its users to validate each others'
public keys rigorously and to manage their own private keys securely.
Both tasks are hard to do well, but public-key security systems lack a
centralized infrastructure for enforcing users' discipline. A
"compliance defect" in a cryptosystem is such a rule of operation that
is both difficult to follow and unenforceable. We present five
compliance defects that are inherent in public-key cryptography, and
argue that these defects make public-key cryptography more suitable
for server-to-server security than for desktop applications.
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