4 ms·

Let’s take a step back here. Everybody has a different standard of privacy they want. There are different levels of trade offs they can make as they become mor

Let’s take a step back here. Everybody has a different standard of privacy they want. There are different levels of trade offs they can make as they become more secure. What you’re describing is the top level of security but it’s not very convenient to use. It also uses private keys which makes establishing a new connection challenging. There are as I see it a few main security modes: stopping automated surveillance and hacking, stopping low effort surveillance and hacking, and being “perfectly” secure from the most motivated adversary. Being perfectly secure on a networked computer is basically impossible. Governments likely have access to back doors and 0days that can compromise anyone (and keep in mind if the person on the other end has bad opsec, you’ve already lost). But they’re probably not going to unleash the fire and fury on Joe Schmo, and would probably be reluctant to target someone security-minded who might identify how they got pwned and publicize the vulnerability unless they have a damned good reason. Most people don’t need never-crackable, they just need to be reasonably assured that only a very motivated adversary could crack them.

ethbr0 6y ago
> Governments likely have access to back doors and 0days that can compromise anyone * anyone running a certain configuration Bugs don't exist in a vacuum. They exist in a specific piece of software, which usually supports a specific feature (e.g. Flash, Microsoft Word, or TCP/IP). Curious in more informed opinions, but it seems unlikely there's a large universe of zero days applicable to every configuration out there. Consequently, a huge part of security is (and has always been!) limiting unnecessary code. Specifically, code accepting input from network connections. Parent's point about crypto algorithms is a form of this: one reason they're so secure, and proveably so, is because they have extremely limited attack surfaces. They take this input, they produce this output.
- opportune 6y ago
  What I first replied to is about a specific private key algorithm that doesn’t have any patterns, and using it over something that can’t be backdoored. Using OTP is not just using crypto, it is pretty much the only “uncrackable” encryption if used properly. My point is that using something like PGP to communicate over TOR (or even OTP over TOR) doesn’t matter if whoever you are trying to hide from has a backdoor to your OS or has the ability to exploit a vulnerability in your OS (which only requires something trivial like you having loaded some random JS in the past year). And there is no way to protect against an undocumented bug in some software you depend on other than to not use it. You can only hope that a government or criminal doesn’t care enough to burn a 0day on you. (Of course you can still airgap a computer with the private PGP key and manually copy the encrypted data over but the question then is whether that is worth the minuscule chance of it mattering)
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    > no way to protect against an undocumented bug in some software you depend on I understand the point you're making, but I feel like it's overstating the frequency. Of all the code in a piece of software, only some amount will have bugs. Of those bugs, only some will be executable in your configuration. Of that buggy code, only some will create security issues. Of those security issues, only some will be network-exploitable. That's a lot of partitioning. So it's fair to say systems run on other systems, but I don't think it's fair to say it's likely that every system has an undiscovered, network accessible security vulnerability.

ethbr0 6y ago

> Governments likely have access to back doors and 0days that can compromise anyone * anyone running a certain configuration Bugs don't exist in a vacuum. They exist in a specific piece of software, which usually supports a specific feature (e.g. Flash, Microsoft Word, or TCP/IP). Curious in more informed opinions, but it seems unlikely there's a large universe of zero days applicable to every configuration out there. Consequently, a huge part of security is (and has always been!) limiting unnecessary code. Specifically, code accepting input from network connections. Parent's point about crypto algorithms is a form of this: one reason they're so secure, and proveably so, is because they have extremely limited attack surfaces. They take this input, they produce this output.

opportune 6y ago
What I first replied to is about a specific private key algorithm that doesn’t have any patterns, and using it over something that can’t be backdoored. Using OTP is not just using crypto, it is pretty much the only “uncrackable” encryption if used properly. My point is that using something like PGP to communicate over TOR (or even OTP over TOR) doesn’t matter if whoever you are trying to hide from has a backdoor to your OS or has the ability to exploit a vulnerability in your OS (which only requires something trivial like you having loaded some random JS in the past year). And there is no way to protect against an undocumented bug in some software you depend on other than to not use it. You can only hope that a government or criminal doesn’t care enough to burn a 0day on you. (Of course you can still airgap a computer with the private PGP key and manually copy the encrypted data over but the question then is whether that is worth the minuscule chance of it mattering)
- ethbr0 6y ago
  > no way to protect against an undocumented bug in some software you depend on I understand the point you're making, but I feel like it's overstating the frequency. Of all the code in a piece of software, only some amount will have bugs. Of those bugs, only some will be executable in your configuration. Of that buggy code, only some will create security issues. Of those security issues, only some will be network-exploitable. That's a lot of partitioning. So it's fair to say systems run on other systems, but I don't think it's fair to say it's likely that every system has an undiscovered, network accessible security vulnerability.