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accept that your public key is useless if twitter accidently logs challenges. or even worse your hardware is useless if key generation is too weak. or even more

by merb 8y ago

accept that your public key is useless if twitter accidently logs challenges. or even worse your hardware is useless if key generation is too weak. or even more worse the protocol is so complex that chances are high that even implementations can contain bugs. or ... most engineers have trouble implementing simple logins with password. do you really think that having a complex system will be better?

emlun 8y ago
>your public key is useless if twitter accidently logs challenges No, this is also incorrect. That's not how public key cryptography works. >your hardware is useless if key generation is too weak This is true, which is why you choose an authenticator vendor that's widely trusted to make high quality hardware. If you don't trust Yubico, there are competitors. >the protocol is so complex that chances are high that even implementations can contain bugs This is only partly true - most of the complexity is in the browser and authenticator layers, and are implemented by cryptography experts in the browser teams and authenticator manufacturers. Almost all of the server layer complexity can be encapsulated in reusable open source libraries - app developers will only have to implement their business logic on top of it, just like they have to do for password authentication too. >do you really think that having a complex system will be better? It will eliminate the problems with phishing and password reuse. That is definitely better in my book.
dandandan 8y ago
Why would Twitter logging the challenges make the key useless? That data has no value and can't be replayed in a future login attack.
yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
This isn't a hypothetical discussion. Asymmetric encryption has been battle-tested for decades now. If it's as weak as you say, SSH and GPG would have gotten blown open long ago rather than being the the thing we all reach for when we wanted an actually unbreakable system.

by merb 8y ago

emlun 8y ago

>your public key is useless if twitter accidently logs challenges No, this is also incorrect. That's not how public key cryptography works. >your hardware is useless if key generation is too weak This is true, which is why you choose an authenticator vendor that's widely trusted to make high quality hardware. If you don't trust Yubico, there are competitors. >the protocol is so complex that chances are high that even implementations can contain bugs This is only partly true - most of the complexity is in the browser and authenticator layers, and are implemented by cryptography experts in the browser teams and authenticator manufacturers. Almost all of the server layer complexity can be encapsulated in reusable open source libraries - app developers will only have to implement their business logic on top of it, just like they have to do for password authentication too. >do you really think that having a complex system will be better? It will eliminate the problems with phishing and password reuse. That is definitely better in my book.

dandandan 8y ago

Why would Twitter logging the challenges make the key useless? That data has no value and can't be replayed in a future login attack.

yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago

This isn't a hypothetical discussion. Asymmetric encryption has been battle-tested for decades now. If it's as weak as you say, SSH and GPG would have gotten blown open long ago rather than being the the thing we all reach for when we wanted an actually unbreakable system.