On Thu, 2017-12-14 at 15:50 -0500, Kent Borg wrote:
> Question: Is it okay for Alice and Bob to communicate with each
> other 
> using a single shared public/private elliptic key pair?
> Experimentally 
> it seems to work, but does it introduce any security holes? (Beyond
> the 
> obvious that keys can't be individually deployed and revoked when
> they 
> are not individually issued.)
> 
> Motivation: Alice and Bob are in the same household, they trust each 
> other. They are, um, liberal, Charlie might be joining, too, they
> will 
> trust him, too. When he does join they would rather not do a bunch
> of 
> two-way key distribution. Also, there might be more than one instance
> of 
> Alice (and of Bob and Charlie), and the Alices (and Bobs and
> Charlies) 
> want to be able to talk to among themselves. They are willing to
> rekey 
> the entire household if need be. And if later they need more
> resolution 
> of who trusts whom they can start issuing some unique keys then. But
> in 
> the meantime, does sharing keys open up any vulnerabilities?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -kb

Premise: I am not a security expert.

Using the same key pair for both endpoints should be the equivalent of
using a pre-shared key, so per-se it shouldn't have any consequences.

Apart from the obvious ones with deployment, double exposure of the
private key (one machine gets compromised == all machines are
compromised) and so on, which you already identified.

-- 
Kind regards,
Luca Boccassi

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