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MITMing the message with the public key attached would be pretty straightforward and impossible to catch without verification over some other secure channel
by superuser2 12y ago
MITMing the message with the public key attached would be pretty straightforward and impossible to catch without verification over some other secure channel
- click170 12y agoWhile what you say is true, it would at least be a step in the right direction towards better privacy. It would provide protection against passive snooping (NSA/GCHQ) even if it wouldn't prevent active attacks. Edit: Typo
- macrael 12y agoThis would be solved by public key encrypting and signing both sides of those messages. Nothing stops people from sharing your public key, so you could develop some kind of one off token for everyone instead, that way you can kill those tokens after a time.
- superuser2 12y agoThe question is how do you know that it's actually their public key. The usual approaches are: 1) verification of they key fingerprint by some other channel, such as the PSTN, but this is obnoxious and feels like tradecraft; you are unlikely to get normal people to do this for normal communications. 2) certification of trust based on 3rd-party verification of government identity documents or control of some address. 3) the web of trust. Might work well for a bunch of security-conscious HN types, but unlikely to be a good solution for people such as our mothers who have neither the cryptographic background to make intelligent decisions about signing keys, nor the inclination to care.