  We address the problem of scaling authentication for naming, routing, and
end-entity certification to a global environment in which authentication
policies and users' sets of trust roots vary widely. The current mechanisms for
authenticating names (DNSSEC), routes (BGPSEC), and end-entity certificates
(TLS) do not support a coexistence of authentication policies, affect the
entire Internet when compromised, cannot update trust root information
efficiently, and do not provide users with the ability to make flexible trust
decisions. We propose a Scalable Authentication Infrastructure for
Next-generation Trust (SAINT), which partitions the Internet into groups with
common, local trust roots, and isolates the effects of a compromised trust
root. SAINT requires groups with direct routing connections to cross-sign each
other for authentication purposes, allowing diverse authentication policies
while keeping all entities globally verifiable. SAINT makes trust root
management a central part of the network architecture, enabling trust root
updates within seconds and allowing users to make flexible trust decisions.
SAINT operates without a significant performance penalty and can be deployed
alongside existing infrastructures.
