Hi Andy, Great post. I especially like the part about making choices. Having users type passwords into websites that "protect" all their assets pretty clearly isn't working. Cardspace is pretty clearly a massive improvement. That said, I don't think the choice is between perfect liberty and perfect security, but more what Dan Geer suggested:
"We digerati have given the world fast, free, open transmission to anyone from anyone, and we've handed them a general-purpose device with so many layers of complexity that there is no one who understands it all. Because “you're on your own” won't fly politically, something has to change. Since you don't have to block transmission in order to surveil it, and since general-purpose capabilities in computers are lost on the vast majority of those who use them, the beneficiaries of protection will likely consider surveillance and appliances to be an improvement over risk and complexity. From where they sit, this is true and normal. While the readers of Queue may well appreciate that driving is much more real with a centrifugal advance and a stick shift, try and sell that to the mass market. The general-purpose computer must die or we must put everything under surveillance. Either option is ugly, but “all of the above” would be lights-out for people like me, people like you, people like us. We're playing for keeps now." http://www.acmqueue.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=436 I hope that cheers everyone up. -gp Andy Steingruebl wrote: > On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 3:42 PM, Gary McGraw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Hi andy (and everybody), >> >> Indeed. I vote for personal computer liberty over guaranteed iron clad >> security any day. For amusing and shocking rants on this subject google up >> some classic Ross Anderson. Or heck, I'll do it for you: >> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html > > I've heard this point for years, and yet when we actually look at ways > of solving the consistent problems of software security, we always > come back to tamper-proof/restricted-rights as a pretty reasonable > starting point. > > I don't know whether this mailing list is really the place for me to > advocate about this, but every time we get into a situation where we > talk about high reliability (electronic voting for example) people > are all up in arms that we haven't followed pretty strict practices to > make sure the machines don't get hacked, aren't hackable by even > experts, etc. hardened hardware, trusted computing bases, etc. > > But, if you want to try and apply the same engineering principles to > protecting an individual's assets such as their home computer, bank > account credentials, etc. then you're trampling on their freedom. > > I don't really see how we can viably have both. Sure we're looking at > all sorts of things like sandboxing and whatnot, but given > multi-purpose computing and the conflicting goals of absolute freedom > and defense against highly motivated attackers, we're going to have to > make some choices aren't we? > > I don't disagree that all of these technologies can be misused. Most > can. We've all read the Risks columns for years about ways to screw > things up. > > At the same time individual computers don't exist in isolation. They > are generally part of an ecosystem (the internet) and as such your > polluting car causes my acid rain and lung cancer. Strict liability > isn't the right solution to this sort of public policy problem, > regulation is. That regulation and control can take many forms, some > good, some bad. > > I don't see the problem getting fixed though without some substantial > reworking of the ecosystem. Some degree of freedom may well be a > casualty. > > Please don't think I'm actually supporting the general decrease in > liberty overall. At the same time I'm pretty sure that traffic laws > are a good idea, speed limits are a good idea, even though they > restrict individual freedoms. In the computing space I'm ok > allowing people to opt-out but only if in doing to they don't pose a > manifest danger to others. Balancing the freedom vs. the restriction > isn't easy of course, and I'm not suggesting it is. I'm merely > suggesting that all of the research we've ever done in the area > doesn't point to our current model (relying on users to make choices > about what software to use) promising. > > How to make this happen without it turning into a debacle is of course > the tricky part. > _______________________________________________ Secure Coding mailing list (SC-L) SC-L@securecoding.org List information, subscriptions, etc - http://krvw.com/mailman/listinfo/sc-l List charter available at - http://www.securecoding.org/list/charter.php SC-L is hosted and moderated by KRvW Associates, LLC (http://www.KRvW.com) as a free, non-commercial service to the software security community. _______________________________________________
