Subject: [secdir] wpkops BOF report

From: Stephen Hanna <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2012 19:40:20 +0000

The Web PKI Operations BOF (wpkops) met on Monday afternoon.
Although this BOF was technically in the OPS area, it is
probably of interest to many people in the SEC area.

Several presenters explained the mess that is the current
web PKI. A draft WG charter was presented, proposing to
document the widely-used parts of this mess so that the
participants can know what to expect. Perhaps someone can
even help make it a little better! But improvements to
the web PKI are explicitly out of scope for this effort:
only documentation of the status quo.

The main topic discussed was whether user interface
should be in scope. The consensus was that we should
include functional documentation of the information
provided to users about the web PKI and the actions
they can take.

With this agreement, there was strong consensus in the
room that the problem statement is clear, well-scoped,
solvable, and urgent. Plenty of editors are on board
and about 20 people indicated that they would read the
drafts and comment. So there was rough consensus that
we should charter a working group in this area.