Accountability in Certificate Transparency and Variants
Formal Dolev-Yao analysis shows plain Certificate Transparency requires an honest log, SCT Auditing removes that assumption, and Gossiping does not.
The paper analyzes accountability in Certificate Transparency and its SCT Auditing and Gossiping extensions in the Dolev-Yao model, starting from a vanilla PKI. It finds plain CT provides accountability only under the assumption of an honest log. The SCT Auditing extension can eliminate that assumption, while the Gossiping extension cannot. CT is supported by all major browsers and obliges Certificate Authorities to record issued certificates in public, monitored logs.
27