3 ms·

You understand the difference between a lone hacker as an APT vs a state level threat as an APT. That distinction is huge and chooing not to defend yourself ag

by sqeaky 10y ago

You understand the difference between a lone hacker as an APT vs a state level threat as an APT. That distinction is huge and chooing not to defend yourself against one or the other may allow for huge convenience gains at the cost what is to many a purely hypothetical notion of security. Can we improve the tools and techniques we have enough so they are convenient enough to not have to make such a choice?

lmm 10y ago
What do you mean by "APT"?
- ranko 10y ago
  "Advanced persistent threat"; see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_persistent_threat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_persistent_threat
lmm 10y ago
I think the big line in terms of what's practical is whether you're willing to trust the CA system or not. If you are - and I think if your threat model is a lone hacker then you can, compromising a single CA or maintaining an MitM requires a very high level of capability - then while doing SSL right and in a way that will let you detect MitM attempts is by no means trivial, there's such a wealth of messaging options available that I'm just not worried about this case. Use whatever, you'll probably be fine. Once you step beyond that, there are no convenient options (or to put it differently, all convenient options come with risks that are more-or-less as big as the CA system). E.g. compromising Signal's central servers is probably not substantially harder than compromising a CA, and I simply don't trust that a system that does automated key exchange on first use (trusting the servers) will be able to avoid downgrade attacks by a compromised server. I think to a certain extent usability issues are inherent - if you are unwilling to trust any centralized identity services then you have to show key fingerprints and rely on the user to verify them themselves, there's no third option. At the same time I think we can and should do a lot better than current GPG.

by sqeaky 10y ago

lmm 10y ago

What do you mean by "APT"?

ranko 10y ago
"Advanced persistent threat"; see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_persistent_threat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_persistent_threat

lmm 10y ago

I think the big line in terms of what's practical is whether you're willing to trust the CA system or not. If you are - and I think if your threat model is a lone hacker then you can, compromising a single CA or maintaining an MitM requires a very high level of capability - then while doing SSL right and in a way that will let you detect MitM attempts is by no means trivial, there's such a wealth of messaging options available that I'm just not worried about this case. Use whatever, you'll probably be fine. Once you step beyond that, there are no convenient options (or to put it differently, all convenient options come with risks that are more-or-less as big as the CA system). E.g. compromising Signal's central servers is probably not substantially harder than compromising a CA, and I simply don't trust that a system that does automated key exchange on first use (trusting the servers) will be able to avoid downgrade attacks by a compromised server. I think to a certain extent usability issues are inherent - if you are unwilling to trust any centralized identity services then you have to show key fingerprints and rely on the user to verify them themselves, there's no third option. At the same time I think we can and should do a lot better than current GPG.