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>Transparency is a dependency of trust. I think you go too far here. Trust is a dynamic spectrum, not binary. Transparency is one potential avenue to add trust
by xoa 8y ago
>Transparency is a dependency of trust.
I think you go too far here. Trust is a dynamic spectrum, not binary. Transparency is one potential avenue to add trust, but is neither necessary nor sufficient in most cases. Every instance must be evaluated in light of its specific details, threat scenarios, and available tradeoffs.
>If you can't see how it works, then it's objectively impossible to trust it to do the right thing.
For most people "seeing how it works" is utterly meaningless by itself because few are able to properly evaluate the system (both knowledge and time play a role). For complex systems they're simply physically beyond the capability of any human to retroactively fully evaluate, or any system at all for that matter. Transparency can help positively change the incentives all involved players face, lower the upfront resource cost to evaluation which in turn may allow users to expand their trust parties to include actors with more direct interest in their interests, allow more casual white hat investigation even if there is less direct compelling need, etc.
In this specific case yes, open should definitely be standard given the stakes and because pure symmetric crypto should be simple, fast and standardized long since. There is no competitive advantage or secret algorithms here to be had. Furthermore as something that is effectively "infrastructure" it can result in less attention then flashier stuff.
But transparency is not a panacea, and closed software can perfectly well be probed anyway (as this very software and every single vulnerability ever found in proprietary software demonstrates!). The biggest value of open is less finding issues then fixing them. That was always the big driver of open source, not that it would somehow be magically bug free by the power of a thousand eyes but that when issues were discovered users wouldn't be up shit creek because whoever made it had gone out of business or moved on to new products or whatever. That has happened constantly with proprietary products for decades, the frustration with that is the huge practical driver for OSS. Over a long enough time span a lot of proprietary software devs will die or pivot or abandon useful expensive "old" tools without support and in turn their customers will get screwed. Transparency/openness can help with that, or at least offer more options. But in terms of just finding security vulnerabilities it's much less of a big deal then it gets made out, which again should be obvious given all the security vulns in proprietary software constantly being found.
- basilgohar 8y agoI did not read GP as saying it was a binary choice, but rather a prerequisite. That is to say, without transparency, there can be no trust, but you can also have no trust with transparency. For someone like me, who is somewhat technically competent, but not a security expert, openness means that names and figures I do trust have the chance to examine whatever I intend to use and comment on it, observe it, and make assessments, including shaming poor implementations claiming traits they have no right to. Turns out there are plenty of people more competent than me that can catch these things. Transparency also allows less hiding of incompetency in otherwise commercial and/or proprietary designs.
- xoa 8y ago>I did not read GP as saying it was a binary choice, but rather a prerequisite. That is a binary statement though, saying it's a prereq is saying without it trust is 0. >That is to say, without transparency, there can be no trust, but you can also have no trust with transparency. That would clearly be incorrect though. Transparency is not needed to probe a system, it is mostly helpful in changing the incentive structure for development in the first place (helping avoid laziness mostly), making the system more likely to be casually looked at, and fixing it if the original party is slow about it or absent. There can absolutely be trust without transparency however when other factors are strong enough, it's just that transparency lowers the strength needed and in turn helps in cases where it's not there. >For someone like me, who is somewhat technically competent, but not a security expert, openness means that names and figures I do trust have the chance to examine whatever I intend to use and comment on it, observe it, and make assessments, including shaming poor implementations claiming traits they have no right to. Turns out there are plenty of people more competent than me that can catch these things. >Transparency also allows less hiding of incompetency in otherwise commercial and/or proprietary designs. That's what I said though? But are you arguing in turn that the typical iPhone is a lot easier to break into and less trustworthy then the typical Android or PC? It's the least transparent after all. And what about for the majority of the population who lack even the technical meta-knowledge we have let alone anything more? They still have to exercise trust, so how do you think that works from their perspective?