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----
-title: Namecoin, A Replacement For SSL
-description: >-
-    If we use the namecoin chain as a DNS service we get security almost for
-    free, along with lots of other benefits.
-tags: tech crypto
----
-
-At [cryptic.io][cryptic] we are creating a client-side, in-browser encryption
-system where a user can upload their already encrypted content to our storage
-system and be 100% confident that their data can never be decrypted by anyone
-but them.
-
-One of the main problems with this approach is that the client has to be sure
-that the code that's being run in their browser is the correct code; that is,
-that they aren't the subject of a man-in-the-middle attack where an attacker is
-turning our strong encryption into weak encryption that they could later break.
-
-A component of our current solution is to deliver the site's javascript (and all
-other assets, for that matter) using SSL encryption. This protects the files
-from tampering in-between leaving our servers and being received by the client.
-Unfortunately, SSL isn't 100% foolproof. This post aims to show why SSL is
-faulty, and propose a solution.
-
-## SSL
-
-SSL is the mechanism by which web-browsers establish an encrypted connection to
-web-servers. The goal of this connection is that only the destination
-web-browser and the server know what data is passing between them. Anyone spying
-on the connection would only see gibberish. To do this a secret key is first
-established between the client and the server, and used to encrypt/decrypt all
-data. As long as no-one but those parties knows that key, that data will never
-be decrypted by anyone else.
-
-SSL is what's used to establish that secret key on a per-session basis, so that
-a key isn't ever re-used and so only the client and the server know it.
-
-### Public-Private Key Cryptography
-
-SSL is based around public-private key cryptography. In a public-private key
-system, you have both a public key which is generated from a private key. The
-public key can be given to anyone, but the private key must remain hidden. There
-are two main uses for these two keys:
-
-* Someone can encrypt a message with your public key, and only you (with the
-  private key) can decrypt it.
-
-* You can sign a message with your private key, and anyone with your public key
-  can verify that it was you and not someone else who signed it.
-
-These are both extremely useful functions, not just for internet traffic but for
-any kind of communication form. Unfortunately, there remains a fundamental flaw.
-At some point you must give your public key to the other person in an insecure
-way. If an attacker was to intercept your message containing your public key and
-swap it for their own, then all future communications could be compromised. That
-attacker could create messages the other person would think are from you, and
-the other person would encrypt messages meant for you but which would be
-decrypt-able by the attacker.
-
-### How does SSL work?
-
-SSL is at its heart a public-private key system, but its aim is to be more
-secure against the attack described above.
-
-SSL uses a trust-chain to verify that a public key is the intended one. Your web
-browser has a built-in set of public keys, called the root certificates, that it
-implicitly trusts. These root certificates are managed by a small number of
-companies designated by some agency who decides on these things.
-
-When you receive a server's SSL certificate (its public key) that certificate
-will be signed by a root certificate. You can verify that signature since you
-have the root certificate's public key built into your browser. If the signature
-checks out then you know a certificate authority trusts the public key the site
-gave you, which means you can trust it too.
-
-There's a bit (a lot!) more to SSL than this, but this is enough to understand
-the fundamental problems with it.
-
-### How SSL doesn't work
-
-SSL has a few glaring problems. One, it implies we trust the companies holding
-the root certificates to not be compromised. If some malicious agency was to get
-ahold of a root certificate they could listen in on any connection on the
-internet by swapping a site's real certificate with one they generate on the
-fly. They could trivially steal any data we send on the internet.
-
-The second problem is that it's expensive. Really expensive. If you're running a
-business you'll have to shell out about $200 a year to keep your SSL certificate
-signed (those signatures have an expiration date attached). Since there's very
-few root authorities there's an effective monopoly on signatures, and there's
-nothing we can do about it. For 200 bucks I know most people simply say "no
-thanks" and go unencrypted. The solution is creating a bigger problem.
-
-## Bitcoins
-
-Time to switch gears, and propose a solution to the above issues: namecoins. I'm
-going to first talk about what namecoins are, how they work, and why we need
-them. To start with, namecoins are based on bitcoins.
-
-If you haven't yet checked out bitcoins, [I highly encourage you to do
-so][bitcoins]. They're awesome, and I think they have a chance of really
-changing the way we think of and use money in the future. At the moment they're
-still a bit of a novelty in the tech realm, but they're growing in popularity.
-
-The rest of this post assumes you know more or less what bitcoins are, and how
-they work.
-
-## Namecoins
-
-Few people actually know about bitcoins. Even fewer know that there's other
-crypto-currencies besides bitcoins. Basically, developers of these alternative
-currencies (altcoins, in the parlance of our times) took the original bitcoin
-source code and modified it to produce a new, separate blockchain from the
-original bitcoin one. The altcoins are based on the same idea as bitcoins
-(namely, a chain of blocks representing all the transactions ever made), but
-have slightly different characterstics.
-
-One of these altcoins is called namecoin. Where other altcoins aim to be digital
-currencies, and used as such (like bitcoins), namecoin has a different goal. The
-point of namecoin is to create a global, distributed, secure key-value store.
-You spend namecoins to claim arbitrary keys (once you've claimed it, you own it
-for a set period of time) and to give those keys arbitrary values. Anyone else
-with namecoind running can see these values.
-
-### Why use it?
-
-A blockchain based on a digital currency seems like a weird idea at first. I
-know when I first read about it I was less than thrilled. How is this better
-than a DHT? It's a key-value store, why is there a currency involved?
-
-#### DHT
-
-DHT stands for Distributed Hash-Table. I'm not going to go too into how they
-work, but suffice it to say that they are essentially a distributed key-value
-store. Like namecoin. The difference is in the operation. DHTs operate by
-spreading and replicating keys and their values across nodes in a P2P mesh. They
-have [lots of issues][dht] as far as security goes, the main one being that it's
-fairly easy for an attacker to forge the value for a given key, and very
-difficult to stop them from doing so or even to detect that it's happened.
-
-Namecoins don't have this problem. To forge a particular key an attacker would
-essentially have to create a new blockchain from a certain point in the existing
-chain, and then replicate all the work put into the existing chain into that new
-compromised one so that the new one is longer and other clients in the network
-will except it. This is extremely non-trivial.
-
-#### Why a currency?
-
-To answer why a currency needs to be involved, we need to first look at how
-bitcoin/namecoin work. When you take an action (send someone money, set a value
-to a key) that action gets broadcast to the network. Nodes on the network
-collect these actions into a block, which is just a collection of multiple
-actions. Their goal is to find a hash of this new block, combined with some data
-from the top-most block in the existing chain, combined with some arbitrary
-data, such that the first n characters in the resulting hash are zeros (with n
-constantly increasing). When they find one they broadcast it out on the network.
-Assuming the block is legitimate they receive some number of coins as
-compensation.
-
-That compensation is what keeps a blockchain based currency going.  If there
-were no compensation there would be no reason to mine except out of goodwill, so
-far fewer people would do it. Since the chain can be compromised if a malicious
-group has more computing power than all legitimate miners combined, having few
-legitimate miners is a serious problem.
-
-In the case of namecoins, there's even more reason to involve a currency. Since
-you have to spend money to make changes to the chain there's a disincentive for
-attackers (read: idiots) to spam the chain with frivolous changes to keys.
-
-#### Why a *new* currency?
-
-I'll admit, it's a bit annoying to see all these altcoins popping up. I'm sure
-many of them have some solid ideas backing them, but it also makes things
-confusing for newcomers and dilutes the "market" of cryptocoin users; the more
-users a particular chain has, the stronger it is. If we have many chains, all we
-have are a bunch of weak chains.
-
-The exception to this gripe, for me, is namecoin. When I was first thinking
-about this problem my instinct was to just use the existing bitcoin blockchain
-as a key-value storage. However, the maintainers of the bitcoin clients
-(who are, in effect, the maintainers of the chain) don't want the bitcoin
-blockchain polluted with non-commerce related data. At first I disagreed; it's a
-P2P network, no-one gets to say what I can or can't use the chain for!  And
-that's true. But things work out better for everyone involved if there's two
-chains.
-
-Bitcoin is a currency. Namecoin is a key-value store (with a currency as its
-driving force). Those are two completely different use-cases, with two
-completely difference usage characteristics. And we don't know yet what those
-characteristics are, or if they'll change. If the chain-maintainers have to deal
-with a mingled chain we could very well be tying their hands with regards to
-what they can or can't change with regards to the behavior of the chain, since
-improving performance for one use-case may hurt the performance of the other.
-With two separate chains the maintainers of each are free to do what they see
-fit to keep their respective chains operating as smoothly as possible.
-Additionally, if for some reason bitcoins fall by the wayside, namecoin will
-still have a shot at continuing operation since it isn't tied to the former.
-Tldr: separation of concerns.
-
-## Namecoin as an alternative to SSL
-
-And now to tie it all together.
-
-There are already a number of proposed formats for standardizing how we store
-data on the namecoin chain so that we can start building tools around it. I'm
-not hugely concerned with the particulars of those standards, only that we can,
-in some way, standardize on attaching a public key (or a fingerprint of one) to
-some key on the namecoin blockchain. When you visit a website, the server
-would then send both its public key and the namecoin chain key to be checked
-against to the browser, and the browser would validate that the public key it
-received is the same as the one on the namecoin chain.
-
-The main issue with this is that it requires another round-trip when visiting a
-website: One for DNS, and one to check the namecoin chain. And where would this
-chain even be hosted?
-
-My proposition is there would exist a number of publicly available servers
-hosting a namecoind process that anyone in the world could send requests for
-values on the chain. Browsers could then be made with a couple of these
-hardwired in. ISPs could also run their own copies at various points in their
-network to improve response-rates and decrease load on the globally public
-servers. Furthermore, the paranoid could host their own and be absolutely sure
-that the data they're receiving is valid.
-
-If the above scheme sounds a lot like what we currently use for DNS, that's
-because it is. In fact, one of namecoin's major goals is that it be used as a
-replacement for DNS, and most of the talk around it is focused on this subject.
-DNS has many of the same problems as SSL, namely single-point-of-failure and
-that it's run by a centralized agency that we have to pay arbitrarily high fees
-to. By switching our DNS and SSL infrastructure to use namecoin we could kill
-two horribly annoying, monopolized, expensive birds with a single stone.
-
-That's it. If we use the namecoin chain as a DNS service we get security almost
-for free, along with lots of other benefits. To make this happen we need
-cooperation from browser makers, and to standardize on a simple way of
-retrieving DNS information from the chain that the browsers can use. The
-protocol doesn't need to be very complex, I think HTTP/REST should suffice,
-since the meat of the data will be embedded in the JSON value on the namecoin
-chain.
-
-If you want to contribute or learn more please check out [namecoin][nmc] and
-specifically the [d namespace proposal][dns] for it.
-
-[cryptic]: http://cryptic.io
-[bitcoins]: http://vimeo.com/63502573
-[dht]: http://www.globule.org/publi/SDST_acmcs2009.pdf
-[nsa]: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/new_nsa_leak_sh.html
-[nmc]: http://dot-bit.org/Main_Page
-[dns]: http://dot-bit.org/Namespace:Domain_names_v2.0