[7548] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Self Decrypting Archive in PGP
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven M. Bellovin)
Mon Jul 24 09:39:24 2000
From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@research.att.com>
To: Eric Murray <ericm@lne.com>
Cc: "Salzman, Noah" <Noah_Salzman@nai.com>, Dave Del Torto <ddt@lsd.com>,
Ove Espeland <OES@eiendomsinfo.no>,
"'cryptography@c2.net'" <cryptography@c2.net>
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Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 02:05:28 -0400
Message-Id: <20000724060533.1AF7935DC2@smb.research.att.com>
In message <20000721132011.W17726@slack.lne.com>, Eric Murray writes:
>
>Why not send then a SDA that contains a copy of PGP, installs it,
>generates a key for the user, posts it to a keyserver, sets up the
>correct MIME content-type hooks in the user's browser, and then send
>them the real PGP-encrypted file 10 minutes later when they're equipped
>to deal with it?
>
>It's still not secure, but it's a lot less insecure than a SDA.
No, it's not, since it reinforces the habit of opening random pieces of
mobile code. (If nothing else, maybe the copy of PGP it installs has a
Trojan horse that exports the user's private key. But there are lots
of other threats here, and I don't think I need to point them out yet
again.)
Someone referred to my Web page on secure email. It's at
http://www.research.att.com/~smb/securemail.html, though only the last
few paragraphs deal with this question.
--Steve Bellovin
