A few observations here. On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 7:20 AM, Jonathan Schleifer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Am 18.08.2008 um 13:39 schrieb Dirk Meyer: > >> Yes, that is solution 1 for this problem. Each user can get a >> certificate signed by the XMPP CA. But is that practical. I have not >> tried to get a signature for my XMPP server yet, but how hard is it? >> Every person who can use an IM client and register for an account >> should be able to get a signed certificate. IMHO usability is the main >> problem we have to keep in mind when trying to solve this. > > It's impossible for the average user to get a certificate. Only geeks will > use encryption then. I still think we should pay the money needed for a > cryptanalysis for ESessions and use that - that's crypto even my grandmother > can use! All that hacky TLS for end-to-end stuff is more than > userunfriendly.
The method you use for establishing trust in credentials is largely orthogonal to the protocol you're using. In particular, TLS is quite compatible with leap-of-faith type mechanisms. That's just not what's the standard end-user clients use. It's true that TLS doesn't currently support an SAS, but it wouldn't be that hard to add if it were determined that that's what people wanted, and that's probably more efficient in the long run than having an entirely separate security protocol for jabber alone. Instead of talking about specific technologies, I would recommend trying to figure out what interaction model you want to have. I.e., what do you want people to do to determine that the person on the other end of the line is the correct one? >> Yes, a key-pair and self-sign to make any TLS library happy. After >> that we can create a web of trust outside the ssl library. I don't >> know if this will work, but it could. > > Signing keys is nothing the average user will do. Never. They will if the software just does it. > Do we want crypto for everyone or do we want crypto for geeks only? > I thought Jabber should be secure by default, this means we need something > WITHOUT certificates checking or signing. We need something like a SAS etc. I must say, I find SAS fairly user unfriendly as well. At least with a fingerprint type mechanism I can go out of band to someone's web site and check the fingerprint. With SAS, I have to actually call them on the phone. -Ekr
