Digital signature in gemini pages

[John Cowan]

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 the
signature when a document is retrieved.  This has two problems:  (a) it is
an 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 bad
considering that Gemini servers are often limited by either CPU or network
bandwidth.

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 and
the content matches the current document, all is well.

However, this assumes that the signature methodology is standardized across
all sites.  So a simpler, more Gemini thing to do is to replace "Check
Signature" with "View Signature", which displays the signature and leaves
it 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.  And
hat does "all sites" even mean?  Even "all documents on the site" does not
need to be a finite number, given the ability to generate documents at the
server.

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 servers
have to be per-document, not per-site.  This adds complexity to the server,
as it has to maintain additional metadata as opposed to keeping either
signature files or a rewrite rule that requests signature files from a
different, more secure site.  The latter is the Right Thing when mirroring
documents from elsewhere: if your server is hacked, the hacker will
certainly 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.org
It was dreary and wearisome.  Cold clammy winter still held sway in this
forsaken country.  The only green was the scum of livid weed on the dark
greasy surfaces of the sullen waters.  Dead grasses and rotting reeds loomed
up in the mists like ragged shadows of long-forgotten summers.
        --LOTR, "The Passage of the Marshes"
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