There are flaws with current PKI infrastructure but as you say, it's better than nothing. There are also several initiatives to improve this situation. Google h

There are flaws with current PKI infrastructure but as you say, it's better than nothing. There are also several initiatives to improve this situation. Google has come with certificate transparency ( http://www.certificate-transparency.org/ http://www.certificate-transparency.org/ ) which essentialy creates public log of all issued certificates so everyone can see and verify that certificates authorities don't issue bogus/fake certificates There is also an idea to use proof of work to estabilish network-wide consensus about valid certificates (like bitcoin or namecoin blockchain). This would be fully decentralised solution.