Re: [Sks-devel] 0xd5920e937cc1e39b shows signatures with 0xca57ad7c continuing?

[Robert J. Hansen]

On 5/27/12 5:50 AM, Giovanni Mascellani wrote:
> I'm just a newbie here, but actually I'd like to see the same concept
> applied in a more general way: I think there is much garbage in the
> keyservers, even behind the PGP robo-signer.

The problem here is this violates one of the principle design features
of the keyserver network:

        "We never, never, never lose certificates."

It is preferable for a keyserver to outright go down than it is for even
one certificate to be lost.  If a certificate is lost then a malicious
actor could re-upload another key with the same short ID (a very easy
thing to do), and that could facilitate all different kinds of attacks
on people who don't properly validity-check certificates before using them.

If the keyserver goes down then everyone knows in short order there's a
problem.  If a certificate is lost and silently replaced it might be a
long time before being discovered.  (Discovery is more likely if the
keyserver is synchronizing with others, but there are a lot of
standalone servers.)

Further, expired certificates are still useful.  I have some emails more
than five years old that are still relevant and useful.  If a
certificate gets removed just because it expires, how am I to check the
signature on those messages in order to ensure they haven't been
tampered with?  If the expired certificate remains on the servers,
though, I can download it, validity-check it, and be confident in the
integrity of my message.

The same logic applies to revoked certificates: they're still useful for
the same reasons.

The keyservers never, never, never lose certificates.  That's a design
goal and one that the SKS maintainers believe is a good one.  I agree
with them, and want to see this design goal maintained in all future
development.

That said, welcome to the community, and please understand that although
I think your idea is awful I'm honestly happy to see you here.  :)  The
mailing list is a place where ideas come into violent collision, but we
try to be reasonable human beings to each other.  Welcome!