3 ms·

Great concise description of the problem. As for the solution, it seems to explicitly not address recovery of lost keys/identities, which is however exactly th

by lxgr 5mo ago

Great concise description of the problem. As for the solution, it seems to explicitly not address recovery of lost keys/identities, which is however exactly the part that makes this hard for regular users. That, and general name confusion attacks, I suppose: "I'm lxgr17@key, yeah, don't ask about the first 16. Oh also make sure 'key' is not the one with the Georgian lowercase e in the middle, that one's an impostor. Wait, actually, let me quickly spell it out in hexadecimal Unicode points..." At least blockchain addresses have that going for them: They're way too long to even try and remember or spell out on the phone.

Krasnol 5mo ago
Wait, actually, let me quickly...send it over in Whatsapp
Terr_ 5mo ago
It's interesting to imagine how different the security landscape would be if human brains could easily transcribe a smallish quantity of high-value bits [0] and then compare two versions for exact equality. I think the exact and trusted data-movement is the hard part. If we could instantly transcribe a 150 digit number (~512 bits) from eye to fingertips, then the actual memory/comparison could be done in any pocket-calculator, with X-Y==0.
tptacek 5mo ago
It's not "hard" for regular users; it's a complete non-starter for regular users. Every "non-custodial" or "self-sovereign" system of trusted identities founders on this issue: account recovery is the hardest problem in identity, and if you don't have a solution for it, your system is going to be a niche at best. People have been coming up with these schemes for decades, and for that entire time, the near-universal de facto standard trusted identity system has been "Google accounts". People knew at the beginning that they were delegating trust to Google; they know it now as well; they are not going to adopt "names resolve to a key, the same key, in every application", no matter how many different names that scheme is given.
- merelydev 5mo ago
  Yes, the UI/UX of decentralized systems is so difficult for users that it creates demand for centralized systems to manage it for them, Coinbase, Gmail, Github, Twitter, The Pirate Bay.
  - buffrr 5mo ago
    there's nothing wrong with a keychain or password manager holding your keys. passkeys already work exactly this way, completely transparent to the user. it's fine for most users.
buffrr 5mo ago
> not address recovery of lost keys/identities Key loss is hard but not insurmountable. Social recovery / split-key custody seem like the right direction. Apple uses "recovery contacts" if you have advanced data protection enabled. A friend holds one share, Apple holds another but neither can recover alone. that's social recovery + split-key shipping to hundreds of millions of devices today > That, and general name confusion attacks, I suppose: "I'm lxgr17@key... pre-registering the obvious typo neighbors (lxrg, 1xgr ... etc) and it's cheap since handles batch-issue off-chain under a fixed 32-byte root, and strict ascii only charset ... etc could help mitigate some of this.

by lxgr 5mo ago

Krasnol 5mo ago

Wait, actually, let me quickly...send it over in Whatsapp

Terr_ 5mo ago

It's interesting to imagine how different the security landscape would be if human brains could easily transcribe a smallish quantity of high-value bits [0] and then compare two versions for exact equality. I think the exact and trusted data-movement is the hard part. If we could instantly transcribe a 150 digit number (~512 bits) from eye to fingertips, then the actual memory/comparison could be done in any pocket-calculator, with X-Y==0.

tptacek 5mo ago

It's not "hard" for regular users; it's a complete non-starter for regular users. Every "non-custodial" or "self-sovereign" system of trusted identities founders on this issue: account recovery is the hardest problem in identity, and if you don't have a solution for it, your system is going to be a niche at best. People have been coming up with these schemes for decades, and for that entire time, the near-universal de facto standard trusted identity system has been "Google accounts". People knew at the beginning that they were delegating trust to Google; they know it now as well; they are not going to adopt "names resolve to a key, the same key, in every application", no matter how many different names that scheme is given.

merelydev 5mo ago
Yes, the UI/UX of decentralized systems is so difficult for users that it creates demand for centralized systems to manage it for them, Coinbase, Gmail, Github, Twitter, The Pirate Bay.
- buffrr 5mo ago
  there's nothing wrong with a keychain or password manager holding your keys. passkeys already work exactly this way, completely transparent to the user. it's fine for most users.

buffrr 5mo ago

> not address recovery of lost keys/identities Key loss is hard but not insurmountable. Social recovery / split-key custody seem like the right direction. Apple uses "recovery contacts" if you have advanced data protection enabled. A friend holds one share, Apple holds another but neither can recover alone. that's social recovery + split-key shipping to hundreds of millions of devices today > That, and general name confusion attacks, I suppose: "I'm lxgr17@key... pre-registering the obvious typo neighbors (lxrg, 1xgr ... etc) and it's cheap since handles batch-issue off-chain under a fixed 32-byte root, and strict ascii only charset ... etc could help mitigate some of this.