At 8:02 AM 5/16/96 -0700, Lyal Collins wrote:
Signing anything is somewaht a waste of time, unless the verification siftware is highly trusted, and there is good intergity/authenticity control of the root public key(s). So, in geneal - ho hum - until trusted hardware is available on the desktop.
A bootable CD-ROM from a reliable source to verify signatures would be much safer than no signatures at all. Even just running the signature verification program from CD-ROM would make an attacker's problem more difficult. BTW - The problem is not trusted hardware. It is software that can isolate untrusted programs and protect itself. Anything with an A or B NCSC security rating would certainly be attractive. Trusted signature verification hardware accessed by a compromised system can't be trusted. (How do you know what was given to the hardware to be verified? How do you know that the answer came from the hardware?) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Frantz | The CDA means | Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting (408)356-8506 | lost jobs and | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz@netcom.com | dead teenagers | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA