[8068] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Public Key Infrastructure: An Artifact...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bram Cohen)
Thu Nov 16 18:57:50 2000
Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 15:33:11 -0800 (PST)
From: Bram Cohen <bram@gawth.com>
To: obfuscation@beta.freedom.net
Cc: rah@shipwright.com, cryptography@c2.net, cypherpunks@cyberpass.net,
dbs@philodox.com, dcsb@ai.mit.edu
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0011161531450.4382-100000@ultra.gawth.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
On Thu, 16 Nov 2000 obfuscation@beta.freedom.net wrote:
> Bram Cohen writes:
> > In the vast majority of cases, preventing man in the middle attacks is a
> > waste of time.
>
> In the sense that, in the vast majority of communications, there is no
> man in the middle attack being mounted?
Yes.
> Couldn't the same thing be said of cryptography, since in the vast
> majority of cases there is no eavesdropping?
Yes, but it's a less vast majority than the ones for which man in the
middle is happening.
> The point in both cases is that if you construct a protocol which has
> weaknesses, eventually people may begin to exploit them.
And if you build a protocol which is a pain to use, noone will use it.
-Bram Cohen
