> This reduces the MITM to the initial handshake. This could be worked out to a degree with some p2p scheme or a set of DHTs for popularity count.
I'm no expert but I think the solution is already here in the form of http://convergence.io/http://perspectives-project.org/ and other, similar projects. If each of us could have several trusted notaries (including an ability to run one) taking a look at every ssl certificate we accept by comparing it to what others are seeing, what is served in the dns records for requested domain, whether its integrity is secured with dnssec, what was presented on last connection, and whether it's signed by a trusted CA, we would have a pretty safe system, unshaken by the failure of any single entity.
Convergence is already doing a lot of it, unfortunately, last time I checked it was still breaking on SNI. But that's a minor problem with a particular plugin, the approach itself is, again in my non-expert opinion, great.
I'm no expert but I think the solution is already here in the form of http://convergence.io/ http://perspectives-project.org/ and other, similar projects. If each of us could have several trusted notaries (including an ability to run one) taking a look at every ssl certificate we accept by comparing it to what others are seeing, what is served in the dns records for requested domain, whether its integrity is secured with dnssec, what was presented on last connection, and whether it's signed by a trusted CA, we would have a pretty safe system, unshaken by the failure of any single entity.
Convergence is already doing a lot of it, unfortunately, last time I checked it was still breaking on SNI. But that's a minor problem with a particular plugin, the approach itself is, again in my non-expert opinion, great.