[112298] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Death of antivirus software imminent
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven M. Bellovin)
Thu Jan 3 22:00:59 2008
Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2008 23:23:33 +0000
From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
To: dan@geer.org
Cc: cryptography@metzdowd.com
In-Reply-To: <20080103165221.0EEDB33C8B@absinthe.tinho.net>
On Thu, 03 Jan 2008 11:52:21 -0500
dan@geer.org wrote:
> The aspect of this that is directly relevant to this
> list is that while "we" have labored to make network
> comms safe in an unsafe transmission medium, the
> world has now reached the point where the odds favor
> the hypothesis that whomever you are talking to is
> themselves already 0wned, i.e., it does not matter if
> the comms are clean when the opponent already owns
> your counterparty.
>
Right -- remember Spaf's famous line about how using strong crypto on
the Internet is like using an armored car to carry money between
someone living in a cardboard shack and someone living on a park bench?
Crypto solves certain problems very well. Against others, it's worse
than useless -- "worse", because it blocks out friendly IDSs as well as
hostile parties.
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
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