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An axiom of cryptographic tool design: there are no advanced users. Designs that ignore the axiom will always create dangerous failure modes.
by n0nc3 6y ago
An axiom of cryptographic tool design: there are no advanced users. Designs that ignore the axiom will always create dangerous failure modes.
- t0astbread 6y agoA consequence of taking this axiom to the extreme is that you might not be able to support many diverse threat models though.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- zaarn 6y agoWell then you develop seperate tools for separate threat models. Covering all possible threat models is impossible and supporting many of them is a heavy maintenance burden that can easily lead to the standard user having their threat model compromised due to the added complexity.
- t0astbread 6y agoFair point. You could have "locked down" tools for standard users and "I can install my PGP smartcard extension" tools for power users. I guess in this case it was unfortunate that Thunderbird happened to be used by both the standard and the power users.
- zaarn 6y agoCartering to power users isn't usually good for marketshare because it means you limit your market share to a small subset of the market. Making Thunderbird more accessible and making GPG more accessible, even if that means you can't support some niche use cases, is usually the better choice.
- t0astbread 6y agoFor a mass-market client, yes. But in an ideal world there would be alternatives that don't aim for market domination catered to a more advanced user base. Those could include functionality that would be unsafe for users who don't know exactly how it works.
- zaarn 6y agoWell, that is what extensions are for in Thunderbird. As long as atleast one poweruser is willing, they can write the powertools.