4 ms·
It is interesting to consider how profoundly obsolete such devices are these days. We live in a world where anyone with a bit of knowledge can establish encrypt
by upofadown 6y ago
It is interesting to consider how profoundly obsolete such devices are these days. We live in a world where anyone with a bit of knowledge can establish encrypted communications anywhere in the world without having to trust any third party. This state of affairs is recent enough that we still don't know the long term ramifications.
- tatersolid 6y agoThere was plenty of strong crypto available to non-governments back in the late 80s and early 90s. We’re 30 years in; the ramifications are clear: one just compromises the insecure memory-and-type-unsafe code on all the endpoint devices instead of trying to bug or break the crypto.
- upofadown 6y agoThat is why we have air gapping now. Added: ... and to be clear, these days, air gapping could look like PGP running on something like a Yubikey.
- ummonk 6y agoI don't see how this is possible. Will you exchange one-time pads in person? That has always been possible. Any of the modern convenient ways to establish encrypted communications certainly require trusting a third party.
- upofadown 6y agoDunno. Checking a number over the phone is pretty darn convenient compared to securely shipping one time pads and/or machines.
- ummonk 6y agoIf you're referring to Signal, there are multiple third parties you need to trust - from the phone manufacturer could be logging your keystrokes to the App Store owner that could be substituting a spyware binary (most people don't verify package signatures) to the Signal developers one of whom could be introducing a backdoor security flaw into the code that wasn't noticed by others.
- nix23 6y ago>It is interesting to consider how profoundly obsolete such devices are these days Do you know how many of those "obsolete" in my case VPN devices i installed? Hundreds...from CheckPoint (Israel) to Zyxel (Swiss) and Sonicwall (USA).
- upofadown 6y agoNot sure how VPNs fit in here. The devices in question provided privacy, not anonymity.
- nix23 6y agoA VPN in a Enterprise is used for privacy and security NOT anonymity.
- upofadown 6y agoThen those are fundamentally different sorts of devices. Message privacy vs link privacy. Data at rest vs data in flight. You would never use a VPN for the sorts of messaging encryption tasks required by an embassy for instance.
- nix23 6y ago>Data at rest vs data in flight. Ah so this machine encrypted a Faxmessage then you got your horse and a USB-Stick and you transport that FAX on the USB-Stick to the other embassy? If your link is encrypted you messages are too..from point to point....like you know the fax-encryptor...secure from starting point to the endpoint
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]