On Sat, Mar 19, 2011 at 2:45 PM, Robert Accettura <[email protected]> wrote: > Are there any successful key based encryption schemes that have actually > succeeded with "normals"?
TLS would be the obvious example, bitlocker and other encrypted file systems as well. We have hopes for the Firefox sync mechanism too, though we built our own cryptosystem to some extent, so...we'll see. Most "normals" don't use crypto APIs of any kind, so I'm not quite sure what you mean. > In my view when we look at GPG, PGP, the complexity was always the key to > failure (pardon the pun, I couldn't resist). API complexity? That's the reason for things like Keyczar: they provide an API where the simplest thing to do is also the safest, and provide fewer places for people to slip up in mode selection, key management, etc. Crypto is hard, and even very experienced practitioners get it wrong a lot. Giving people raw AES/SHA-256/etc. is unlikely to lead to them building secure systems, though it will likely let them believe that they did. Keyczar et alii are not a panacea: you still need to actually manage the environment, but they take away a lot of error surface, and remove the need for a lot of arcane mathematical knowledge. > While I'm not opposed to something along those lines, I do think that the > more traditional schemes should be considered though perhaps discouraged. I don't see the value of adding something that we immediately discourage people from using. Mike _______________________________________________ es-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
