[18119] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: solving the wrong problem
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Peter Gutmann)
Mon Aug 8 09:44:08 2005
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
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From: pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann)
To: adam@homeport.org, jsd@av8n.com
Cc: cryptography@metzdowd.com, perry@piermont.com
In-Reply-To: <42F6C3CB.3070800@av8n.com>
Date: Tue, 09 Aug 2005 01:04:10 +1200
Adam Shostack <adam@homeport.org> writes:
>Let me propose another answer to Perry's question:
> "Wearing a millstone around your neck to ward off vampires."
>
>This expresses both ends of a lose/lose proposition:
> -- a burdensome solution
> -- to a fantastically unimportant problem.
That sounds a bit like "unicorn insurance" ("We've taken out insurance against
unicorns, and we know that it's effective because we haven't been attacked by
any unicorns yet"), which is used for silly threat models. However, this is
slightly different from what Perry was suggesting. There seem to be at least
four subclasses of problem here:
1. "???" : A solution based on a misunderstanding of what the real problem is.
2. "Unicorn insurance": A solution to a nonexistent problem.
3. "???": A solution to a problem created artificially in order to justify its
solution (or at least to justify publication of an academic paper
containing a solution).
4. "PKI": A solution in search of a problem.
Peter.
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