Re: Humorous anti-SSL PR
Eric: On 2004, Jul 15, , at 17:55, Eric Rescorla wrote: There are advantages to message-oriented security (cf. S-HTTP) but this doesn't seem like a very convincing one. Could you please elaborate on this, or refer me to a document which expresses your views? I just read [1] in search of such ideas, but I have not yet read your book on TLS. Thanks, Zooko [1] http://www.terisa.com/shttp/current.txt - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Humorous anti-SSL PR
John Denker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > "J Harper" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >>>This barely deserves mention, but is worth it for the humor: >>>"Information Security Expert says SSL (Secure Socket Layer) is Nothing More >>>Than a Condom that Just Protects the Pipe" >>>http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/7/prweb141248.htm > > To which Eric Rescorla replied: > >> What's wrong with a condom that protects the pipe? I've used >> condoms many times and they seemed to do quite a good job >> of protecting my pipe. > > The humor just keeps on coming. It's always amusing to > see an invocation of the principle that "I've tried it > on several occasions and it seemed to work, therefore > it must be trustworthy." Actually, that's a pretty reasonable way of assessing safety in systems where there's no attacker specifically targeting you. Or are you claiming that we shouldn't have confidence in the MMR vaccine because there's a small possibility that someone will engineer a vaccine-resistant strain of measles? Yes, I'm quite aware that it's traditional to assume a threat model in which there's a very smart attacker dedicated to attacking you in particular, but 99.9% of the time that's not the situation, and it's silly to suggest that something is worthless merely because it doesn't provide protection that .1% of the time. -Ekr P.S. FWIW, I've skimmed Articsoft's web site and as far as I can tell their product is "superior" in two respects: (1) The data is transmitted as an encrypted OpenPGP message so in theory it's protected even at rest. In practice, of course, to do real-time processing the server needs to be able to decrypt, so it's not clear that any actual benefit obtains here. There are advantages to message-oriented security (cf. S-HTTP) but this doesn't seem like a very convincing one. (2) They control the client side so they can enforce a more strict integrity/authenticity check than the browser does. Of course, the browser's weak cert checking is an intentional feature, not a mistake--users got tired of not being able to get to web sites just because the certs were bad. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Humorous anti-SSL PR
"J Harper" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: This barely deserves mention, but is worth it for the humor: "Information Security Expert says SSL (Secure Socket Layer) is Nothing More Than a Condom that Just Protects the Pipe" http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/7/prweb141248.htm To which Eric Rescorla replied: What's wrong with a condom that protects the pipe? I've used condoms many times and they seemed to do quite a good job of protecting my pipe. The humor just keeps on coming. It's always amusing to see an invocation of the principle that "I've tried it on several occasions and it seemed to work, therefore it must be trustworthy." What's wrong with this depends, as usual, on the threat model. Sometimes it is wise to consider other parts of the system (not just the pipe) in the threat model. If we set you up on a blind date with an underfed grizzly, you might find that protecting your pipe with a condom doesn't solve all your problems. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Humorous anti-SSL PR
>This barely deserves mention, but is worth it for the humor: >"Information Security Expert says SSL (Secure Socket Layer) is Nothing More >Than a Condom that Just Protects the Pipe" >http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/7/prweb141248.htm The article says "The weaknesses of SSL implementations have been well known amongst security professionals, but their argument has been that SSL is the best tool currently on offer. The fact that it can be spoofed and is open to man in the middle attacks is played down." O.k., so if there is a vulnerability in a particular implementation there might be a possible MITM attack. Also possible to do MITM if user doesn't do proper verification. But I wouldn't say that SSL implementations in general are suspect to MITM attacks. Later in the article it is written: "What we can be certain of is that it is not possible to have a man-in-the-middle attack with FormsAssurity - encryption ensures that the form has really come from the claimed web site, the form has not been altered, and the only person that can read the information filled in on the form is the authorized site." O.k., so how do they achieve such assurances? Eric's comment about condoms being effective is right, so bad analogy as well! --Anton - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Humorous anti-SSL PR
J Harper wrote: This barely deserves mention, but is worth it for the humor: "Information Security Expert says SSL (Secure Socket Layer) is Nothing More Than a Condom that Just Protects the Pipe" http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/7/prweb141248.htm I guess the intention was to provide more end-to-end security for transaction data. After a reasonable start, if a bit scattered, it breaks down with this: "What we can be certain of is that it is not possible to have a man-in-the-middle attack with FormsAssurity – encryption ensures that the form has really come from the claimed web site, the form has not been altered, and the only person that can read the information filled in on the form is the authorized site." Which is quite inconsistent - so much so that it seems that the press release writer got confused over which system he or she was talking about. iang - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Humorous anti-SSL PR
"J Harper" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > This barely deserves mention, but is worth it for the humor: > "Information Security Expert says SSL (Secure Socket Layer) is Nothing More > Than a Condom that Just Protects the Pipe" > http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/7/prweb141248.htm What's wrong with a condom that protects the pipe? I've used condoms many times and they seemed to do quite a good job of protecting my pipe. -Ekr - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Humorous anti-SSL PR
This barely deserves mention, but is worth it for the humor: "Information Security Expert says SSL (Secure Socket Layer) is Nothing More Than a Condom that Just Protects the Pipe" http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/7/prweb141248.htm - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
