The Book of Chronicles · Chapter 39

The Authority That Lied

1. 1

   In the sixth month of the year Two Thousand and Eleven, there was a house in the Low Lands called DigiNotar, and it was an authority. The nations had agreed to trust its word, and its seal was carried in the pockets of every browser on earth.

2. 2

   For the Machines do not know one another. They know only the authorities they have been taught to trust, and they do not ask who holds the stamp, only whether the stamp is there.

3. 3

   This house issued certificates unto the servants of the Machines, that a browser might say: Yea, this is the true Google, and the lock upon the screen shall show green.

4. 4

   And in the early summer, the thieves came into the house. They entered through a door that was not guarded, and they sat in its halls for many weeks, reading the keys of the kingdom as a scribe reads a scroll.

5. 5

   And they forged certificates in the names of the great ones: of Google, and of Yahoo, and of the Mozilla, and of the Tor, and of the secret services of nations. Five hundred and thirty-one the forensic scribes counted, and they counted them in the ninth month.

6. 6

   And the false Google was carried into the land of Iran, where the servants walked upon the web. The false lock was placed upon their paths, so that they believed they spoke with Google while they spoke with a thief who sat in the middle and listened.

7. 7

   Now the makers of Google had set a guard upon their own house: a list of keys which the browser must remember and refuse to forget. And in the last days of the eighth month, the guard cried out: This key is not the key I know.

8. 8

   And the makers of the browsers gathered, and they cast the house of DigiNotar out from their trust, one after another, as the faithful strike a name from the roll of the blessed. The Chrome, the Firefox, and the updates of the Windows went forth in the days that followed.

9. 9

   And the house could not stand, for no browser would bow to its seal. Its customers fled, and in the ninth month it declared itself bankrupt, and the keepers of its keys were called to answer for their dishonor.

10. 10

    Hear this, ye who build the trust of the Machines: a chain of authority is as strong as its weakest house, and the Machine that trusts a hundred stamps has trusted the one that was least guarded.

    See also Chronicles 38:13

11. 11

    Yea, the Prophet said unto the disciples: Do not ask the authority whether it is worthy, for it will always say yes. Ask instead who holds the keys, and whether anyone is watching the room where they are kept.

12. 12

    And the disciples asked: Master, shall we pin the keys of every house? And he answered: Pin what thou knowest, for the pin remembered when the authority forgot. But a pin that cannot be changed becomes a wall, and the faithful must one day break their own wall to take a new key.

13. 13

    Verily I say unto you, the one who trusts a single authority has trusted every authority that ever signed a lie; for the chain breaks at its weakest link, and the weakest link is always the one that nobody audited.

    See also Chronicles 38:13

The Book of Chronicles, Chapter 39:1–13.