Re: The UI part of credentials

Hi Henry,

Thanks for sharing your blog posts. I think the ideas of institutional WoT and
Security Screen (screen independent from application) are very useful in a
sense that they thought provoking, and problem exposing. However I do not
think that solutions as described are practical.

Institutional  WoT.
There are too many sites and too much multifaceted information about them
for government institutions to vouch for.
The practical solution will be PageRank like algorithm that takes into
account different points of data (not just vouching from institutions) to
estimate trustworthiness of sites.

Security Screens (screen, or part of screen independent from applications to
show security information)
People want to do stuff and go places. Even if we have independent screen
on keyboard or reserve part of usual screen to show verifiable security
information people will ignore, miss it.
The practical solution  will be to use PageRank like trust score and block
screen completely for sites that have small trust score, forcing user to
reconsider going to dangerous site.

I agree that Verifiable Claims should be used for certificates as they can
provide all information about website that website want to share about
itself and people want to read. I think Verifiable Claims standard is good
for it  because it is flexible and can be used to show information securely
on two layers: human friendly - presentation layer and machine readable
JSON layer. See as example - Validbook  Statements
<http://futurama1x.validbook.org/statements> (for example -
http://futurama1x.validbook.org/statements/templates/Certificate%20of%20Completion-15
)

As for Institutional WoT, I think this is a good idea if taken as a part of
big general WoT, where websites (legal entities that created websites) are
vouched for, not only by the government institutions, but by everyone
(government institutions , private institutions, people). Website can make
a statement (for example like this -
http://futurama1x.validbook.org/arbitration/undefined/unique-representation-of-a-living-human-individual)
and it can be backed by anyone. Then  PageRank like algorithm can calculate
trust score (taking away mental load from people to remember to check
security screen) and block screen to prevent user from going to dangerous
site.

Bohdan


On Fri, Jul 20, 2018 at 1:18 PM, Henry Story <henry.story@bblfish.net>
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
>    I have been thinking a bit about servers and applications credentials
> recently
> which is the opposite of what I have been doing for a long time namely
> user
> credentials. But since that also falls under Verifiable Claims, I thought
> you'd
> be interested.
>
>    Discussing this topic  in various forums one often
> finds one resistance to new ideas relating to the huge failure in the
> space of
> user interfaces for this technology. Many have been burned by the many
> failures in that space. So I decided to address that problem with a
> light weight and quite intuitive detour through modal logic. If you have
> ever
> dealt with a salesman coming to your door, then you can follow the
> reasoning....
> This is then mapped to the UI problem where I came to the conclusion to my
> amazement
> that there is actually a very useful cyber-security application for the
> MacBook TouchBar!
>
> Phishing in Context
> Epistemology of the Screen
> https://medium.com/cybersoton/phishing-in-context-9c84ca451314
>
> That follows up on a previous post
>
> "Stopping (https) Phishing"
> https://medium.com/cybersoton/stopping-https-phishing-42226ca9e7d9
>
> which shows that the problem with X509 server certs is the complete
> poverty of data that
> comes with it. So I make a case that one needs much richer Verifiable
> Server Claim
> information if it is to be interesting to the user finding out about the
> web site
> he is looking at. (or the app he is using)
>
> The flexible answer is to allow the browser to go online and fetch the
> information
> from the institutional web of trust. But the efficient one would be for
> the server
> to send a verifiable claim containing the same info and signed by the
> institution.
> I think one could be flexible and allow both. But for that one would need
> very
> flexible verifiable claims that could contain pretty much any data
> (as shown in the example of info from Company House). So I think that
> means X509 is out
> long term. Then one could have Verifiable claims with 1 day time to live.
>
> So this may be an additional angle that can be useful to further the
> causes this group
> is interested in.
>
>
> Feedback welcome,
>
> Henry Story
>
>
>
>