From owner-mcg-talk@localhost Wed May 7 14:06:02 1997
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From: "173447" <mcg-talk@mcwg>
Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 10:10:58 -0700
To: mcg-talk@localhost (416720)
Subject: Re: First Draft of MC Proposal
Sender: owner-mcg-talk@mcwg
Status: RO
X-Status: A

There is a non-partisan non-technologically-bound concept which the MCG
might wish to explore as a unifying theory for the interaction between
the MC/MCC properties and the set oreal-world problems which are to be
solved.

A certified end-user key exists to establish assurance in the
authenticty of the keying material; certification is the process for
effecting such assurances.

However, more generally, a certification chain can exist whose purpose
is to 'distribute the (asymmetric) key". Key Distribution, unlike key
certification, requires notions of revocation, compromise recovery, and
management of risk to compensate for inadequate or costly procedures of
key distribution..

In such a simple theory, key certification validity is not a
overly-variable quantity: the degree of variability is limited to the
"legal fact" (affirmative fact exists, or does not exist) established
when a using party ("relying party"?) *accepts* it, or not, as useful.

The systemic purpose of key distribution is to provide a "metric space"
whereby many procedures, which handle certification chain(s), may be
(multiply) used to measure whether a given asymmetric key pertaining to
an end-user is indeed useful, or not. The metric is an expression of
relative certainity for a specific security problem, and application
context, given all available knowlege of the operational vulnerablities.

Separation of key certification and key dsitribution may be useful to
the exposition of the Meta-Certificate design.