[127181] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: The wisdom of the ill informed
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (=?UTF-8?Q?Ivan_Krsti=C4=87?=)
Tue Jul 1 11:07:17 2008
Cc: Allen <netsecurity@sound-by-design.com>,
Nicolas Williams <Nicolas.Williams@sun.com>,
Arshad Noor <arshad.noor@strongauth.com>,
Cryptography <cryptography@metzdowd.com>
From: =?UTF-8?Q?Ivan_Krsti=C4=87?= <krstic@solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu>
To: Perry E. Metzger <perry@piermont.com>
In-Reply-To: <87lk0mmrty.fsf@snark.cb.piermont.com>
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:38:49 -0400
On Jun 30, 2008, at 7:22 PM, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> One of the most interesting things I find about most fields is the
> fact that people who are incompetent very often fancy themselves
> experts. There's a great study on this subject -- usually the least
> competent people are the ones that feel highly confident in their
> skills, while the people who aren't have more doubts. One sees this
> very phenomenon on this very list, and not infrequently.
Indeed:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wobegon_effect>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect>
How security non-experts screwed up security in systems like WEP and =20
PPTP is no mystery to me. How, on the other hand, a real expert at =20
_anything_ feels comfortable entering another hard technical field =20
without screaming for assistance is something I don't get at all.
That a roomful of network experts designing 802.11 didn't hold hands =20
and all together chant "bring us a good cryptographer" with such =20
maniacal monophony as to rival any Gregorian choir makes me highly =20
suspicious about their supposed expertise with _networks_.
--
Ivan Krsti=C4=87 <krstic@solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | http://radian.org
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