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From: Jim Klo <jim.klo@sri.com>
To: "<user@couchdb.apache.org>" <user@couchdb.apache.org>
Subject: Re: Cryptograhically signed docs...
Thread-Topic: Cryptograhically signed docs...
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Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2012 17:01:48 +0000
Message-ID: <79061073-7E58-4CBC-9DC1-8A98C6811796@sri.com>
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Yes, and as a matter of fact, i just got digital signature validation using=
 OpenPGP within a map function working a few minutes ago!

Here's a link to the relevant code: https://github.com/jimklo/TheCollector/=
blob/master/dataservices/thecollector-resources/views/lib/sig_utils.js

I'm using my own slightly edited version of the OpenPGP.js (http://openpgpj=
s.org/) project library.  Essentially all I did was add a CommonJS exports.=
openpgp declaration and some mock object declaration (navigator, localStora=
ge, etc)

The problem you run into however with what you want to do, is you will not =
have access to the a user object inside or a userCtx since you're not actua=
lly authenticating to pair a valid keyid with. The best you might do is use=
 a validate update doc function with a fixed set of whitelisted public keys=
 stored in your design doc. It's not very scalable, but really your only so=
lution since you can't break the idempotency to fetch additional external p=
ublic keys.


Jim Klo
Senior Software Engineer
Center for Software Engineering
SRI International

On Jul 3, 2012, at 8:53 AM, Albin Stig=F6 wrote:

Hi,

Did anyone experiment with cryptographically signing docs as a method
of "authentication"..? I was thinking something along these lines:
Instead of using name/password login all posted docs must be signed
with a private key. The server has a list of the public keys that are
allowed to post. If the signature is not correct the validation
function rejects the new/updated doc.

I think this scheme could have many interesting use cases... It might
also be a way of maintaining "ownership" across replication.

Did anyone try this?

--Albin


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