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It is absolutely a crazy idea. Physical analogies don't really work in this situation because of the scale, and the payout. A physical master key for a buildi

It is absolutely a crazy idea. Physical analogies don't really work in this situation because of the scale, and the payout. A physical master key for a building has a few hundred thousand/a few million people that could potentially access it. The payout is low (i.e. the motivation is low on average) An encryption backdoor to phones has a few billion people that could potentially access it. From anywhere in the world. The payout is huge (access to all iPhones). Multiple entire governments would dedicate tens of millions of dollars and thousands of people to gain access to a ubiquitous backdoor on something like a phone. The same just isn't true with your building analogy -- they are completely different.

lll-o-lll 2y ago
It doesn’t have to be one key for all, one key for a bucket, per user if needs be. Can’t these master keys be in offline HSM’s? I get your argument, but it doesn’t seem an impossible problem to solve.
- immibis 2y ago
  So the UK government would buy one HSM for every UK citizen and store their backdoor access key on there? And put the HSMs where? In a big room? Protected by a door, with one key? Or maybe each of the 650 elected politicians gets to hold 10 HSMs, each holding 10,000 keys? That way, by distributing trust, we can be completely sure that politicians are always snooping on about 10% of everyone's mails, instead of worrying about whether it's 100% or 0% at any particular moment.
gopher_space 2y ago
More to the point, a master key is a management tool for infrastructure maintenance. Its relationship to security is that I can securely keep all the monkeys organized in my monkey hut. The master key exists in a world where you can throw a brick through a window. Security *around* the master key is entirely about pinning liability to one human being at a time. Security through hot potato.

lll-o-lll 2y ago

It doesn’t have to be one key for all, one key for a bucket, per user if needs be. Can’t these master keys be in offline HSM’s? I get your argument, but it doesn’t seem an impossible problem to solve.

immibis 2y ago
So the UK government would buy one HSM for every UK citizen and store their backdoor access key on there? And put the HSMs where? In a big room? Protected by a door, with one key? Or maybe each of the 650 elected politicians gets to hold 10 HSMs, each holding 10,000 keys? That way, by distributing trust, we can be completely sure that politicians are always snooping on about 10% of everyone's mails, instead of worrying about whether it's 100% or 0% at any particular moment.

gopher_space 2y ago

More to the point, a master key is a management tool for infrastructure maintenance. Its relationship to security is that I can securely keep all the monkeys organized in my monkey hut. The master key exists in a world where you can throw a brick through a window. Security *around* the master key is entirely about pinning liability to one human being at a time. Security through hot potato.