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TWP: A brief note on multiple trust roots.

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Mike Hearn 2019-07-22 16:43:24 +02:00
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docs/source/whitepaper/corda-technical-whitepaper.tex
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@ -579,10 +579,16 @@ certificate authorities are a part of the `root store' and thus trusted to verif
only delegated by the software vendors. Corda doesn't ship a root store, as that would make the software maintainers
be the ultimate identity root of all networks granting too much power. Consider a software update that added a CA
to the trust store controlled by a rogue developer, for example - this would grant that rogue developer full read/write
access to every Corda network. Instead, the network operator is the root and may delegate authority as they see fit.
Whilst normally used to delegate authority over the sub-namespace of a single legal entity, as described above, it is
theoretically also possible to delegate in other ways, for example, along national boundaries, or simply to grant
unconstrained certificate-issuing power to other firms, as is done in the web PKI.
access to every Corda network.
Instead, the network operator is the root and may delegate authority as they see fit. Whilst normally used to
delegate authority over the sub-namespace of a single legal entity, as described above, it is theoretically also
possible to delegate in other ways, for example, along national boundaries, or simply to grant unconstrained
certificate-issuing power to other firms, as is done in the web PKI. In such a configuration care would have to be
taken to ensure only a single certificate laying claim to a name/key pair was issued, as the platform as this time
cannot handle the ambiguity of multiple live certificates for the same identity in different parts of the
hierarchy. The issues involved in having multiple certificate issuers for a single network may be addressed in
future work, but would not remove the requirement to have a single coherent set of network parameters.
\subsection{Confidential identities}\label{subsec:confidential-identities}