-- > "James A. Donald" <jam...@echeque.com> writes: >> For password-authenticated key agreement such as >> TLS-SRP or TLS-PSK to work, login has to be in the >> chrome.
Peter Gutmann wrote: > Sure, but that's a relatively tractable UI problem Indeed. You know how to solve it, and I know how to solve it, yet the solution is not out there. As you say, shared secrets should be entered a form that implements password-authenticated key agreement such as TLS-SRP or TLS-PSK, that cannot easily be spoofed, that is clearly associated with the browser and with a particular url and web page (you suggest that the form should roll out of the browser bar with an eye catching motion and land on top of the web page) and an encrypted connection should be established by that shared knowledge, which cannot be established without that shared knowledge. This, however, requires both client UI software, and an api to server side scripts such as PHP, Perl, or Python (the P in LAMP). On the server side, we need a request object in the script language that tells the script that this request comes from an entity that established a secure connection using shared secrets associated with such and such a database record entered in response to such and such a web page, an object to which the script generating a page can associate data that persists for the duration of the session - an object that has session scope rather than page scope, scope longer and broader than that of the thread of execution that generates the page, but shorter and narrower than that of the database record containing the shared secrets, a script accessible object that can only be associated with one server, one server side process and one server side thread at a time. This is non trivial to implement in an environment where servers are massively multithreaded, and often massively multiprocess. > Certificates on the other hand are an apparently > intractable business, commercial, user education, > programming, social, and technical problem. I'd much > rather try and solve the former than the latter. What makes certificates such a problem is that there is someone in the middle issuing the certificate - usually someone who does not know or trust either of the entities trying to establish a trust relationship. While certificates frequently makes cryptography unnecessarily painful and complicated, certificate issue offers the opportunity to make money out of providing encryption by being that someone in the middle, hence the remarkable enthusiasm for this technology, and stubborn efforts to apply it to cases where its value is limited, and it is far from being the most convenient, practical, and straightforward solution. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majord...@metzdowd.com