A Logic of Sattestation
Aaron D. Jaggard, Paul Syverson, Catherine Meadows

TL;DR
This paper introduces a formal logic for reasoning about contextual trust in web addresses, incorporating structural and descriptive trust roots, and provides soundness proofs and an effective trust derivation algorithm.
Contribution
It presents a novel logic for modeling and reasoning about both structural and descriptive trust in web addresses, including trust delegation and trust chains.
Findings
The logic is sound under reasonable assumptions.
An algorithm for deriving trust statements is sound, complete, and terminating.
The approach enhances resistance to hijack vulnerabilities.
Abstract
We introduce a logic for reasoning about contextual trust for web addresses, provide a Kripke semantics for it, and prove its soundness under reasonable assumptions about principals' policies. Self-Authenticating Traditional Addresses (SATAs) are valid DNS addresses or URLs that are generally meaningful -- to both humans and web infrastructure -- and contain a commitment to a public key in the address itself. Trust in web addresses is currently established via domain name registration, TLS certificates, and other hierarchical elements of the internet infrastructure. SATAs support such structural roots of trust but also complementary contextual roots associated with descriptive properties. The existing structural roots leave web connections open to a variety of well-documented and significant hijack vulnerabilities. Contextual trust roots provide, among other things, stronger…
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Taxonomy
TopicsAccess Control and Trust · Web Application Security Vulnerabilities · Security and Verification in Computing
