Honestly, I don't get it. Maybe I don't know enough about the fediverse?
Doesn't the fediverse already have a mechanism where each user can set a profile, which everyone else has a common view of and other people can't change? Couldn't a parallel mechanism distribute public keys in a similar way?
What's the issue here - that the server where you have your account can replace your keys?
I know SSL's "certificate transparency" tries to detect replaced and mis-issued certificates after the fact, by putting them all into an immutable log that can be searched by domain name. It doesn't stop the attack, but it at least makes it detectable after the fact. Yet if the entries in the log can be deleted, so there's no longer a log that would prove an attack had happened, wouldn't that prevent the log fulfilling its sole purpose?
Doesn't the fediverse already have a mechanism where each user can set a profile, which everyone else has a common view of and other people can't change? Couldn't a parallel mechanism distribute public keys in a similar way?
What's the issue here - that the server where you have your account can replace your keys?
I know SSL's "certificate transparency" tries to detect replaced and mis-issued certificates after the fact, by putting them all into an immutable log that can be searched by domain name. It doesn't stop the attack, but it at least makes it detectable after the fact. Yet if the entries in the log can be deleted, so there's no longer a log that would prove an attack had happened, wouldn't that prevent the log fulfilling its sole purpose?