[cryptography] The consequences of DigiNotar's failure

[Ian G]

On 18/09/11 8:38 AM, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 1:07 PM, M.R.<makrober at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> On 16/09/11 09:16, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
>>>
>>> The problem is that people will probably die
>>> due Digitar's failure.
>>
>> I am not the one to defend DigiNotar, but I would not make such
>> dramatic assumption.
> I don't think DigiNotar has any defenders remaining :) As for the
> dramatic assumptions, I believe past performance is indicative of
> future expectations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAVAK and
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAVAMA. (Sorry about the lame wiki
> reference, I probably should have found a UN human rights report).


I don't think there is any doubt that people can die because of breached  
communications.  No need to look at the Iranians, just look at the US CIA, 
and the intel feeding into drones.

The question of causality is one that is very difficult to determine,  
absent some pattern revealed by WikiLeaks (who have been accused as well).

However causality is also very important.  Without some historical pattern 
of facts, we're all speculating to a greater or lesser degree. How 
confident are we of that?

>> No one actively working against a government that is known to engage
>> in extra-legal killings will trust SSL secured e-mail to protect him
>> or her from the government surveillance.

This is a sadly inaccurate statement.  Most people working actively and  
aggressively against unconstrained governments know diddly squat about  
tech.  The communities have frequent roll-over, frequent recruitment. The 
techies working with them are under considerable pressure to deliver, and 
often make basic mistakes.


> Perhaps I don't appreciate all the pressure and options, but I believe
> an [external] email service using HTTPS is one of the safer options
> available when observing due dilligence.

Yes, definately.  Open question:  did the 9/11 guys use HTTPS?  Or just  
HTTP?  I'm still searching for a case where it makes a clear difference.

(Their main counter-intel coup was to understand that the threat model  
better than their enemy.  Their technique was to open an ordinary Yahoo  
style account, share the account, then open up a draft email, and share  
that!  Never send it, just edit and delete, over and over.  The NSA which 
were presumably hoovering all sent emails ... never saw a thing.)

> Its kind of like the poor
> man's cloud (and corporate america is flocking to the cloud, in part
> due to the additional layer of liability offload).

! OK, I'll bite.  How does one offload liability by using the cloud?



(Note that liability is the keystone to the PKI debate....  Understand the 
liability transfers and you understand why it's SNAFU.)



iang
_______________________________________________
cryptography mailing list
cryptography at randombit.net
http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography

----- End forwarded message -----
-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE