[8083] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Public Key Infrastructure: An Artifact...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ben Laurie)
Sat Nov 18 14:37:35 2000
Message-ID: <3A169428.D4976572@algroup.co.uk>
Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2000 14:37:28 +0000
From: Ben Laurie <ben@algroup.co.uk>
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Bram Cohen <bram@gawth.com>
Cc: obfuscation@beta.freedom.net, rah@shipwright.com, cryptography@c2.net,
cypherpunks@cyberpass.net, dbs@philodox.com, dcsb@ai.mit.edu
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Bram Cohen wrote:
>
> 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.
What, like SSL, for example?
Cheers,
Ben.
--
http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html
"There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he
doesn't mind who gets the credit." - Robert Woodruff
