CDR: Re: Public Key Infrastructure: An Artifact...

Bram Cohen bram at gawth.com
Thu Nov 16 15:33:11 PST 2000


On Thu, 16 Nov 2000 obfuscation at beta.freedom.net wrote:

> Bram Cohen writes:
> > In the vast majority of cases, preventing man in the middle attacks is a
> > waste of time.
> 
> In the sense that, in the vast majority of communications, there is no
> man in the middle attack being mounted?

Yes.

> Couldn't the same thing be said of cryptography, since in the vast
> majority of cases there is no eavesdropping?

Yes, but it's a less vast majority than the ones for which man in the
middle is happening.

> The point in both cases is that if you construct a protocol which has
> weaknesses, eventually people may begin to exploit them.

And if you build a protocol which is a pain to use, noone will use it.

-Bram Cohen





More information about the cypherpunks-legacy mailing list