I would like to give an update on "federation" on Bluesky.

[erincandescent@akko.erincandescent.net]

@trwnh @mcc @ikuturso @jrose In did:plc:foo, foo is a base32(sha256(creation_request))[0:20] so its a 120-bit hash. I’m not confident of that’s long term security

Also the did:plc update metadata protocol is fundamentally dependent upon the existence of a central trusted system so you can’t just easily replicate it as a DHT system

[esoteric_programmer@social.stealthy.club]

@trwnh @lrhodes @mat @mcc @alter_kaker I thought @user.domain.tld is just a way to point to @did:plc:blahblahblah, the same way we do with webfinger over here. Wouldn't this difference in the protocol make an impersonation attack more possible?

[trwnh@mastodon.social]

@erincandescent @ikuturso @mcc @jrose i think you could replace it with signed updates but in doing so, you've basically just wrapped around to needing a pki

[erincandescent@akko.erincandescent.net]

@trwnh @ikuturso @jrose @mcc there are broadly 3 types of DID that exist at the moment:

1. Fixed unchangable keys (did:key)
2. Depend upon central system for updates (did:web, did:plc); did:web is decentralised in the sense anyone can run a server for said DIDs but a given DID is always tied to a given DNS domain
3. Dependent upon a blockchain for updates (most of them)

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@trwnh @erincandescent @ikuturso @jrose this raises an important question. Why the fuck are we not just using a pki to start with

[trwnh@mastodon.social]

@esoteric_programmer @lrhodes @mat @mcc @alter_kaker you are *supposed* to "convert" the user.domain.tld to did:plc:blah, but you can still construct references against user.domain.tld. but you're not supposed to. but every user-facing component only shows you the user.domain.tld instead of the did:plc:blah, so if you're just copying from your address bar, you are going to get the "wrong" identifier most likely.

it has the exact same properties as letting a dns name lapse and get reassigned.

[erincandescent@akko.erincandescent.net]

@mcc @trwnh @ikuturso @jrose did:plc is using a PKI but it also provides ways of doing account recovery that pure-PKI systems fail to acheive

[erincandescent@akko.erincandescent.net]

@mcc @ikuturso @jrose @trwnh basically it kind of comes down to average people are not great at handling cryptographic keys

[trwnh@mastodon.social]

@mcc @erincandescent @ikuturso @jrose uhhhh

"key management hard", basically

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@erincandescent i think in order to solve this problem without centralization you do need a ledger ("blockchain"). That's simply the way to get a canonically agreed on ordering of events. I think there are some reasons to go with a data structure *other* than literal blockchain for your ledger. But if you create a canonically agreed on ordering of events (which as far as I'm concerned you need if you want to support key rotation/did changes) then more or less by definition you've made a ledger

[trwnh@mastodon.social]

@erincandescent @ikuturso @mcc @jrose isn't plc basically custodial keys?

[erincandescent@akko.erincandescent.net]

@trwnh @mcc @ikuturso @jrose thinking about how my PGP key expires because the certification key was on a yubikey in a bank vault in a different country

[erincandescent@akko.erincandescent.net]

@trwnh @ikuturso @mcc @jrose uhh i thought the custody was being done by the appview or pds but i don’t remember the details

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@erincandescent I have an entirely workable proposal for how to achieve that in a distributed system, which the mastodon dot social post length is too small to contain

[esoteric_programmer@social.stealthy.club]

@trwnh @lrhodes @mat @mcc @alter_kaker This is offtopic in a way, but oho, I didn't have to look too deeply to find this:
https://github.com/qwell/bsky-exploits
nothing extremely serious, but could be used for fishing campaigns and the like pretty easily

[ireneista@adhd.irenes.space]

@mcc @erincandescent we should sync up about that at some point, we've thought about it also and it'd be a shame to never turn it into a spec

[ireneista@adhd.irenes.space]

@mcc @erincandescent the historical answer to why atproto isn't using traditional PKI, as far as we can tell, is that the authors were under the impression DID is a lot more useful than it is. just a guess on our part.

[tryst@fedi.imu.li]

@mcc@mastodon.social @erincandescent@erincandescent.net are you claiming that 90s pattern of long term identity keys that sign use keys and can invalidate themselves by signing a new identity key is blockchain?

(i mean sure, there's a chain of keys, but no blocks required)

[rakoo@blah.rako.space]

@trwnh

No, the bittorrent DHT has methods to update content sent in the DHT with no need for a PKI: https://bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0049.html

@erincandescent @ikuturso @mcc @jrose

[tylercook@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@mcc I do, yeah. So it's just one part of the stack. The complicated parts come later, eh?