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I think here is where the problem isn't purely a technical one anymore. You're right that, from a legal perspective, there is a difference as the burden of proo
by GTP 2y ago
I think here is where the problem isn't purely a technical one anymore. You're right that, from a legal perspective, there is a difference as the burden of proof would now be on someone else. But, if this actually matters or not, depends entirely on the situation. If you're a criminal trying to get away with something then the change in the burden of proof is all you need. If instead you're a politician trying to avoid some imbarassment, the situation isn't any different: you're claiming in both cases that someone is trying to frame you for something you didn't say. In one case, this person stole your password, in the other he/she used an old and by now publicly available DKIM key. But if people believe you or not (and this would be everything a politician would care about) depends on factors outside the scope of cryptography. Regarding OTR: IIRC it is based on a shared secret. This can work for IM, but it wouldn't scale for emails as it would pose the key distribution issues that made us discover public key cryptography.
- tptacek 2y agoIf you are a politician trying to get away with something, the public might have an interest in your secure messaging system being bad, but you yourself do not. Secure messaging systems generally take the side of their users, not the public.
- GTP 2y agoSorry, I'm missing what you're trying to say here, maybe that a politician would be more careful about which message system he's using? I don't think that's necessarily the case. Anyway, to further add to my point, depending on the context you don't even need to claim that someone stole your password. In the company where I am now , it is custom that, if someone finds out someone else didn't lock their computer, that someone sends an email (from the victim's account) to the whole office saying that the victim is going to bring cake to the office. DKIM is meant to prove that a message comes from an authorized server, but to prove the identity of the sender as well you need something more. Edit: to be fair, I do get that with DKIM deniability gets harder. But I think that, for the average person, you would gain more in terms of spam and phising protection than what you loose. High profile targets have to take different security measures than the masses anyway.
- tptacek 2y agoWhat I'm saying is that the "crooked politician" use case you're talking about for DKIM is a way in which you're pleased that a messaging system is insecure, because that insecurity works in your favor (because you're not the user; you just want to violate that user's privacy). But no rational user would want that property for themself; they can only lose from it.
- GTP 2y agoThank you, I get it now. The reason why I focused on that specific example, is because it is used in the blog post as proof that DKIM is being actively used to prove that someone actually sent an email.