Cryptographic authentication of VOEvents

[Steve Allen]

On Mon 2012-09-10T10:42:19 +0200, John Swinbank hath writ:
> In particular, I'm worried about barrier-to-entry.  Signing a bucket
> o' bytes has the advantage of simplicity; XML-DSig has the advantage
> of the W3C behind it, and consequent (presumed, at least) legitimacy
> and library support.

One of the features of XML-DSig is the ability to sign only some
portions of the document, or to let multiple different agents sign
different portions.  That could allow an authentication agent to sign
only Who and WhereWhen as a means to verify priority of discovery.
In order to avoid the issues of changing URIs the signature could omit
any Reference elements.

Yes, there is a complexity here that makes a barrier to entry, largely
because applying signatures to only portions of documents wants a
consensus on the use cases for those signed VOEvent documents.

--
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