CDR: Re: Schneier: Why Digital Signatures are not Signatures (was Re: CRYPTO-GRAM, November 15, 2000)

[R. A. Hettinga]

At 1:12 AM -0500 on 11/16/00, Declan McCullagh wrote:


> Bruce's article is well-written, but it covers ground already
> well-trodden by others.

Certainly.

Carl Ellison, Perry Metzger, and even law professors like Jane Kauffman
Wynn, have been saying this stuff for years.

> Moreover, most, if not all, of his points
> apply to data-scrambling encryption applications on the same computer.

Yup.

But, frankly, you don't want to do commerce, especially finance, on a
platform you don't have absolute control over, anyway. As Chaum and others
point out, you want your own box, with its own I/O, and so on. Fortunately,
falling hardware prices and miniaturization continue to accelerate apace.

> Still, maybe it'll raise the visibility of this problem.

And that's why I'm passing this around. Bruce succeeds where others fail,
by the way, because takes complicated crypto stuff like this and reduces it
to plain English better than just about anybody out there at the moment.

Cheers,
RAH
-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
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"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
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