4 ms·
I wonder how much > A small number of users performing "stealthy" authentication could protect other users by creating uncertainty about which connections can
by vilhelm_s 12y ago
I wonder how much
> A small number of users performing "stealthy" authentication could
protect other users by creating uncertainty about which connections
can be undetectably attacked
is worth in our post-Snowden world. We already know that the governments of the US, China, Syria, etc, are carrying out pervasive surveillance. They could just start doing MITM attacks against _every_ connection, and we'd be in the same situation as we were before implementing opportunistic encryption?
- AlyssaRowan 12y agoThe funny thing about an MITM is that you can track down where it happens...
- fiatmoney 12y agoThat would be expensive. The goal is to generate asymmetric costs.
- tptacek 12y agoBe careful what you wish for. NSA's biggest policy goal isn't total awareness of all information on the Internet. It's maximizing their budget.
- gizmo686 12y agoIt is impossible to do dragnet MITM undetected. The probability of a single target validating public keys is low, but if you try MITM`ing every connection, then people will notice the public keys do not match.
- vilhelm_s 12y agoSure, I understand that. I'm saying, what if the NSA just started to MITM all connections, or a large fraction of them? It would be easy to notice that they were doing so, so we would detect that they are doing dragnet surveillance. But we already know they are, so it seems nothing much would change compared to the current situation.