Decentralized trust establishment over a censorship-resistant name system

Description

In this thesis, we explore the integration of the GNU Name System (GNS), a decentralized and
censorship-resistant name system, into the LIGHTest Trust Framework, a global infrastructure
for validating electronic transactions based on user preferences. The thesis discusses the conceptual
and technical changes required to replace the Domain Name System (DNS) and its security extensions (DNSSEC)
with GNS in LIGHTest, and evaluates the impact of this change on the trust, security, privacy, performance, and
deployability of the framework. The thesis also provides a proof of concept implementation of the modified
LIGHTest components and demonstrates their functionality with a test scenario involving the verification of
signatures from different trust schemes. The thesis concludes that GNS offers several advantages over DNSSEC
in terms of resilience to state-backed adversaries, privacy protection, and flexibility, while also posing some
challenges and limitations.