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John Cowan cowan at ccil.org
Fri Feb 19 19:06:12 GMT 2021
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On Fri, Feb 19, 2021 at 11:33 AM Christophe HENRY <listes at sbgodin.fr> wrote:
There may be several modes:
* The browser is configured to not care about signature. Everything go
as usual. Just like any non-aware browser.
* The browser is configured to indicate that this file exists, but does
nothing. It would display a special icon https-style.
The only way that can work is for the client to automatically request thesignature when a document is retrieved. This has two problems: (a) it isan automatic network action, which clients are not supposed to do, and (b)it will cause a lot of useless hits when signatures are rare, which is badconsidering that Gemini servers are often limited by either CPU or networkbandwidth.
I think the Right Thing is for browsers to have a command/menu option"Check Signature", which appends ".asc" to the pathname of the current URI(not to the whole URI), and attempts to retrieve that. If it succeeds andthe content matches the current document, all is well.
However, this assumes that the signature methodology is standardized acrossall sites. So a simpler, more Gemini thing to do is to replace "CheckSignature" with "View Signature", which displays the signature and leavesit to the user to determine the signature on the local copy of the document.
* The user would ask the browser to check for a particular site or for
all sites.
WI don't understand this: signatures are per-document, not per-site. Andhat does "all sites" even mean? Even "all documents on the site" does notneed to be a finite number, given the ability to generate documents at theserver.
The rest follow the spirit of "Trust on first use". For instance,
storing the public key of the author in the website. Maybe a kinda
web-of-trust among some websites gathered in rings…
The server can't assume that all documents have the same author, so servershave to be per-document, not per-site. This adds complexity to the server,as it has to maintain additional metadata as opposed to keeping eithersignature files or a rewrite rule that requests signature files from adifferent, more secure site. The latter is the Right Thing when mirroringdocuments from elsewhere: if your server is hacked, the hacker willcertainly alter the signature as well, but if the signature is off site,that is more difficult.
John Cowan http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan cowan at ccil.orgIt was dreary and wearisome. Cold clammy winter still held sway in thisforsaken country. The only green was the scum of livid weed on the darkgreasy surfaces of the sullen waters. Dead grasses and rotting reeds loomedup in the mists like ragged shadows of long-forgotten summers. --LOTR, "The Passage of the Marshes"-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: <https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/attachments/20210219/6d1e44b6/attachment.htm>