Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-12 Thread Roscoe
While the ontopicness of my comment is a bit questionable

I don't think I've gotten an encrypted email in the last 12 months,
but I still use gpg every day.

All Debian and (I imagine, or at least hope) Debian derivatives such
as Ubuntu incorporate digital signing of software.

I think signing of software to be a pretty important thing, and
represents a relatively large userbase that's not to be overlooked.
Though, admittedly, some proportion of them are indifferent towards
it.

-- Roscoe

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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-12 Thread Mark H. Wood
On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 11:37:12PM -0500, Robert J. Hansen wrote:
 A few years ago a fellow grad student of mine, Peter Likarish, developed
 a really cool anti-phishing technology.

[but test subjects didn't react to the warning]

 Peter's hypothesis was that Flash ads are to blame.  Users have become
 conditioned to having Flash ads appear on the screen, take over real
 estate, and so on.  Therefore, users were subconsciously filtering out
 this big red alert bar and it was never percolating up to the conscious
 level where users could make an informed decision about the risks.

Yes indeedy.  Those ad.s appear at the top of the page (and elsewhere,
but there's *always* one at the top).  We're rigorously trained every
day to ignore stuff at the top of the page that doesn't look like what
we expected.  Maybe he should try a bar across the *middle* of the
window, or a diagonal, or alpha-blend a red overcast onto the entire
page

Still, it's another technology-intractable problem.  If people cared,
they would train themselves to look for trouble indicators, like
scanning the dashboard from time to time for problems with speed,
fuel, temperature, etc.  We're trained to operate motor vehicles, but
not to operate browsers or MUAs.  (It's intuitive!  Not.)  And
meanwhile the world is training us that it is vitally important to our
sanity and the defense of our time to learn to detect and ignore
things that we don't care about.

I think that technology can't help this as much as would knowing why
we want some technology.  People who feel a need will look for tools
to deal with it; people who feel no need will ignore the finest tools.

-- 
Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer   mw...@iupui.edu
Friends don't let friends publish revisable-form documents.


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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-12 Thread Jean-David Beyer

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Mark H. Wood wrote:
|
| Still, it's another technology-intractable problem.  If people cared,
| they would train themselves to look for trouble indicators, like
| scanning the dashboard from time to time for problems with speed,
| fuel, temperature, etc.  We're trained to operate motor vehicles, but
| not to operate browsers or MUAs.  (It's intuitive!  Not.)

I know drivers who have no clue about all those trouble indicators.

I was a passenger with a friend and I noticed the engine temperature
gauge was too high. I urged her to stop the car until it could cool down
and we could see what the trouble was. She said she would do that after
lunch, but she did not have time then. I told her to turn the heater on
full, and since this was summer, she objected, but did it. When we got
to the restaurant, she turned the motor off. After lunch it had cooled
down some, so I looked into the radiator where there was no noticeable
water. We got some from the restaurant. I forgot what the trouble was
(defective radiator hose, loose clamp, etc.), but at least she did not
need to get a new engine.

People often drive for months with the Check Engine light on. When I
ask about this, they say it is nothing: it is always on. They have seen
it so long they have gotten used to it. They just do not care.

I knew a guy who had a Pontiac station wagon he bought new. He never had
it serviced or even checked the oil or the oil pressure light. Well one
of those will go about 25,000 miles before seizing up.

- --
~  .~.  Jean-David Beyer  Registered Linux User 85642.
~  /V\  PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine   241939.
~ /( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jerseyhttp://counter.li.org
~ ^^-^^ 10:05:01 up 4 days, 12:00, 3 users, load average: 4.56, 4.59, 4.68
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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-12 Thread Mario Castelán Castro
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January 12th 2010 in gnupg-users@gnupg.org thread Web of Trust itself
is the problem

Actually I was quoting Robert Holtzman, not Robert J. Hansen, sorry
for not including the full name.

I have no time now to read those texts because my holidays ended
alredy :(.
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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-11 Thread dan

David Shaw writes, in part:
-+-
 | It's not that they gave it a bit of thought and decided
 | against it for  whatever reason - they never gave it even a
 | moment of thought.  The  only crypto they use is the crypto
 | that is invisible to them (usually  https, which is pretty
 | invisible).


I used to work at Verdasys.  One of the strong
selling points with its customers is as you say,
for crypto to be in place but with no user the wiser
nor need that they be.  A piece of marketing material:

http://www.verdasys.com/images/uploads/Encryption_DataSheet.pdf

There are quite a few installations of the above at
the 100,000 seats level (enterprise deployment).

--dan


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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-11 Thread Bernhard Kleine
Am Montag, den 11.01.2010, 01:26 -0500 schrieb Robert J. Hansen:
 On 01/10/2010 10:57 PM, Faramir wrote:
 ...I just about had a heart attack.  The
 voting authorities thought this was just fine...
 
 _

You are obviously not loved by the voting authorities :-)

Greetings from the Black Forest!

Bernhard
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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-10 Thread Faramir
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Hash: SHA256

Robert J. Hansen escribió:
...
 Crypto is not like this.  Sure, you don't need to understand Feistel
 networks or large number theory in order to use crypto, but look at what
 you *do* need to understand:
 
 * Identity verification
  I think I understand it.

 * Document verification
  I hope I understand it.

 * What a hash is
  I understand it.

 * How hashes are used
  I think I understand it.

 * How hashes are misused and shouldn't be used
  Ehh... I've never thought about it. How they should not be used?

 * Out-of-band verification
  I think I understand it...

 * Type I versus Type II error
  I don't have any idea about this, can you please clarify it?

...
 As an example, a fairly tech-savvy friend of mine made a habit of
 signing all her emails.  Her reasoning was, if people ever see a
 message that's not signed, they'll know it's not from me.  This
 reasoning sounds good, and many people on this list would probably agree
 with it.  The problem is that it's incorrect.
 
 If someone using her name were to post a racist, hate-filled screed on
 the internet, would she really be able to persuade people she didn't
 write it just by saying look, I didn't sign it?  Or would her critics
 say, of course you didn't sign it, you wanted to be able to deny
 writing it!?

  I get your point. However, people should be considered innocent until
proven guilty. Of course if we talk about racism, paedophilia or drugs
traffic, people is guilty even if they have been dead for years before
the incident.

  Best Regards
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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-10 Thread Robert J. Hansen
On 01/10/2010 10:57 PM, Faramir wrote:
 * How hashes are misused and shouldn't be used
   Ehh... I've never thought about it. How they should not be used?

I've seen computerized votes authenticated by MD5 hash... sent over
email... in the same message as the official vote record.  As in, the
attachment has MD5 hash XXX, if your version hashes out to XXX then the
vote record is authenticated.  I just about had a heart attack.  The
voting authorities thought this was just fine, and a perfectly correct
use of hashes.

 * Type I versus Type II error
   I don't have any idea about this, can you please clarify it?

False positive versus false negative.

If there's a transmission error in the sigblock *but not in the source
text*, you can have a bad signature with a completely intact message.
Therefore, the fact a signature is bad doesn't automatically tell you
the message was tampered with.

If the message was altered somehow, the signature will be bad.  However,
if the signature is bad, that doesn't necessarily mean the message was
altered somehow.

A lot of people miss this point.  It's kind of important.

 I get your point. However, people should be considered innocent until
 proven guilty.

What should be true is a question for religion, philosophy and ethics.
Engineering is about asking what *is* true.

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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-10 Thread Jim Dever
On 1/11/2010 1:26 AM, Robert J. Hansen wrote:

 I've seen computerized votes authenticated by MD5 hash... sent over
 email... in the same message as the official vote record.  As in, the
 attachment has MD5 hash XXX, if your version hashes out to XXX then the
 vote record is authenticated.  I just about had a heart attack.  The
 voting authorities thought this was just fine, and a perfectly correct
 use of hashes.

E...  unbelievable!

-- 
Jim

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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-09 Thread Heinz Diehl
On 09.01.2010, RobertHoltzman wrote:

  Personally I think a lot of people care about privacy, but are just not
  able and/or frightened to install something complex on their machines.

 Then you get the contingent that sats I have nothing to hide.

What I've encountered is that lots of people answering that way do not
actually mean what these words say, but use them as a way to avoid saying
the truth: I'm not able to install such software, I can not understand
how this works at all, it seems way too complicated to me, 
and I do not want you to know that I do not even understand the slightest 
bit at all of what you're talking about :-)

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565


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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-09 Thread RobertHoltzman
On Sat, Jan 09, 2010 at 02:49:13PM +0100, Heinz Diehl wrote:
 On 09.01.2010, RobertHoltzman wrote:
 
   Personally I think a lot of people care about privacy, but are just not
   able and/or frightened to install something complex on their machines.
 
  Then you get the contingent that sats I have nothing to hide.
 
 What I've encountered is that lots of people answering that way do not
 actually mean what these words say, but use them as a way to avoid saying
 the truth: I'm not able to install such software, I can not understand
 how this works at all, it seems way too complicated to me, 
 and I do not want you to know that I do not even understand the slightest 
 bit at all of what you're talking about :-)
 
 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565

That is a great paper. I am keeping it for the next time I run into one
of them.

-- 
Bob Holtzman
GPG key ID = 8D549279
If you think you're getting free lunch
check the price of the beer.


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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-08 Thread Dmitri Minaev
On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 9:08 PM, Mario Castelán Castro
mariocastelancas...@gmail.com wrote:

 I think the WoT and in general the cryptography is not widely used
 because few people really care about their privacity.

IMHO, there's another problem, an entry barrier to the WoT. The
practice of key exchange is widespread in very close circles of geeks,
Linux developers and, to a certain degree, scientists. For someone who
does not belong to these categories and does not attend any
conferences, the web of trust is hardly reachable. Unfortunately, I
know no solutions besides commercial CAs.

-- 
With best regards,
Dmitri Minaev

Russian history blog: http://minaev.blogspot.com

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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-08 Thread Simon Josefsson
Dmitri Minaev min...@gmail.com writes:

 On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 9:08 PM, Mario Castelán Castro
 mariocastelancas...@gmail.com wrote:

 I think the WoT and in general the cryptography is not widely used
 because few people really care about their privacity.

 IMHO, there's another problem, an entry barrier to the WoT. The
 practice of key exchange is widespread in very close circles of geeks,
 Linux developers and, to a certain degree, scientists. For someone who
 does not belong to these categories and does not attend any
 conferences, the web of trust is hardly reachable. Unfortunately, I
 know no solutions besides commercial CAs.

Sites such as http://biglumber.com/x/web can help with this.  My
perception of it is that it does not exclude non-geeky people.

/Simon

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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-08 Thread Dmitri Minaev
On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 8:21 PM, Mario Castelán Castro
mariocastelancas...@gmail.com wrote:

IMHO, there's another problem, an entry barrier to the WoT. The
practice of key exchange is widespread in very close circles of
geeks, Linux developers and, to a certain degree, scientists. For
someone who does not belong to these categories and does not attend
any conferences, the web of trust is hardly reachable. Unfortunately,
I know no solutions besides commercial CAs.

 Well, you really don't *need* to be within WoT to use crypto, the
 confidence level will be less but for most people it is enougth.

Actually, you don't really *need* to use crypto in email, the
confidence level will be less, but to most people it is enough :)

-- 
With best regards,
Dmitri Minaev

Russian history blog: http://minaev.blogspot.com

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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-08 Thread Robert Holtzman
On Fri, Jan 08, 2010 at 10:21:51AM -0600, Mario Castel�n Castro wrote:
 
 Did you count the citys in the list, they are just 11 of thoustands
 and thoustands around the world; it helps of course, but very little.

You obviously didn't try to use the search box to find more cities.

-- 
Bob Holtzman
Key ID: 8D549279
If you think you're getting free lunch,
 check the price of the beer


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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-08 Thread Heinz Diehl
On 07.01.2010, Mario Castelán Castro wrote:

 I think the WoT and in general the cryptography is not widely used
 because few people really care about their privacity.

I think the overall stats for people using cryptography is that low
because it is or seems too complicated for them. A lot of people in the
world do not even know how to install Windows, and a whole lot of people
even can't install programs on their computers properly. This is not meant
in a discriminating way at all, this is the real life.

Personally I think a lot of people care about privacy, but are just not
able and/or frightened to install something complex on their machines.


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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-07 Thread Werner Koch
On Thu, 07 Jan 2010 09:36:26 +, makrober wrote:

 G/PGP isn't widely used because it does not address adequately the
 real-life operational circumstances of the potential user, and

I still believe that OpenPGP along with PGP 2.1 is the most used data
protection scheme for plain data and email.  We don't have any hard
facts except for problem reports we have seen over more than a decade.
There must be a reason why OpenPGP application are even sold for
mainframes; they need to exchange data with Unix and PC users.

 On the other hand, WoT brings with it an immense problem for a
 large number of those that need to communicate in secrecy: it is
 providing an adversary with a traffic analysis tool that he can
 only wish for. To state - as those who promote the system in its

That is simply not true.  The only fact you can read from the WoT is
that two person have met around some date.  That is in most
circumstances not a secret fact; you merely have to look at the list
of attendees of conferences.  The WoT can give you only a clue if you
have only a few signatures on your key.

You can get a better set of data for traffic analysis by monitoring
the keyservers.  However this has nothing to do with the WoT.

 Or - Web of Trust isn't the solution, Web of Trust is the problem.
 Consequently, a WoT improvement mechanism such as outlined in
 the presentation is, unfortunately, extremely unlikely to advance
 the adoption of g/pgp.

Until recently almost every mail client simply ignored the key
validity and encrypted anyway.  Yes, that is not as one should do it
but it shows that the WoT is not really used.  The majority of people
don't care.  For example. my key is around for many years now and for
quite some time it has been one of the top connected keys.  Despite
that I only recently could find a trust path to the keys used to sign
the linux kernel.  They Linux hackers obviously didn't care about
getting involved into the WoT.  (I am not sure whether this is pro or
contra to your statement ;-)


Shalom-Salam,

   Werner

-- 
Die Gedanken sind frei.  Ausnahmen regelt ein Bundesgesetz.


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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-07 Thread makrober

Thanks for your comments Werner;

Werner Koch wrote:

On Thu, 07 Jan 2010 09:36:26 +, makrober wrote:


G/PGP isn't widely used because it does not address adequately the
real-life operational circumstances of the potential user, and


I still believe that OpenPGP along with PGP 2.1 is the most used data
protection scheme for plain data and email. 


Correct, but still there is no doubt that only a very small fraction
of what I would call qualified e-mail is encrypted. (In this context,
let's agree that qualified is mail between two parties that have
a trust relationship and a real need for secrecy (from whatever
adversary!) as opposed to those that would just encrypt the mail out
of style or principle. We probably agree at least that that the adoption
of encryption in computer communication, both general and qualified
communication is surprisingly low, and that it is worth examining why
is this the case and what should or could be done to change that.

I offered one view of the reasons, but in the following I would also
suggest what would be worth undertaking:

Using the excellent crypto-code base of GnuPG, a derivative public
key encryption/decryption product with the following characteristics
should be created:

1) it should be communication channel and protocol agnostic.

2) its operational components should be self-contained; i.e., it should
assume it is running on a stand-alone computer. It should require no
tight integration with the operating system of the computer it is
running on.

4) until successfully decrypted, none of the data it operates on should
be distinguishable from a random stream.

5) it assumes that someone or something outside of the system guarantees
the authenticity of fingerprint of the public key of the corresponding
party.

6) it can be both shell-driven and provide an API for the inclusion
into a variety of software products that manage the variety of
constantly evolving communication channels and protocols.

MacRober

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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-07 Thread Greg Sabino Mullane

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Hash: RIPEMD160


 But the rest of the Why isn't [it] used is plain wrong.

 G/PGP isn't widely used because it does not address adequately the
 real-life operational circumstances of the potential user, and
 Web of Trust is the main culprit. It brings an enormous burden to
 the development and - consequently - to the daily use of the system.
 This burden is of such magnitude that it prevents all but technically
 very competent computer users from adopting the system.
 Yet it addresses the need that is present, I propose, only for a very minor
 segment of users: those that would like to communicate in secrecy
 but have not had a previous trusted relationship.

You're disregarding the other major use of the WoT, which is
authentication.

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane g...@turnstep.com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 201001070642
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8
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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-07 Thread makrober

Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:


But the rest of the Why isn't [it] used is plain wrong.

G/PGP isn't widely used because it does not address adequately the
real-life operational circumstances of the potential user, and
Web of Trust is the main culprit. It brings an enormous burden...


You're disregarding the other major use of the WoT, which is
authentication.


A public key communication system such as gnupg can have three,
somewhat related but to the user very distinct purposes:

1) secrecy of communication
2) authentication of the public key of message recipient.
3) non-repudiation of the content by it's sender.

To a cryptographer, all three may seem equally important. In practice,
they are not: the first one is of extreme importance and can not be
substituted by any means outside of the system. The second not only
can be achieved by methods that operate in addition to or outside of
the system, but it is, for varios reasons I outlined before, sometimes
(or perhaps even often?) desirable to do so. Finally, the third
(I believe this is what you refer to above?) is, in practical terms,
an extremely rare requirement when compared to the first one.

If the above is the case, making a system very hard to use because of
secondary objectives which are either hardly ever of real use
(non-repudiation) or likely/preferably achieved by other means better,
can't be conducive to the wide adoption of such system.

MacRober

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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-07 Thread Daniel Kahn Gillmor
On 01/07/2010 04:36 AM, makrober wrote:
 *Most individuals will rarely, if ever, be motivated to communicate
 in secrecy with someone they don't already have a trusted
 relationship with*.

I beg to differ.  anyone who has ever conducted online business has a
strong incentive for communications secrecy with a remote party with
whom they do not yet have a trusted relationship.

At the very least, the transfer of payment credential information is
something most people would prefer was only seen by the other party in
the transaction.

The fact that most online transactions like this happen through the
world wide web these days, and not e-mail, is perhaps a reason that the
WoT does not have wider adoption, since the WoT is not used for the www
(yet -- some of us are working on that).

Online transactions are only one of many examples, but probably the one
that people are most familiar with.  The WoT also provides a method to
handle situations like key loss or revocation, and subsequent new keys
without forcing the keyholder to meet up in-person (or otherwise secured
out-of-band) with every one of their contacts.

Why is this all relevant?  There are good reasons why you might be
interested in knowing that someone specific signed something public , of
course (e.g. software signatures, advice on mailing lists or other fora,
etc).  But for non-public communications: you *must* know who the remote
endpoint is in order to have truly secret communications.  Without that
knowledge, you are communicating with an unknown party, so who are you
keeping things secret from?

secret communications with an unknown remote party over a
trivially-compromised communications medium are anything but secret.

--dkg



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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-07 Thread Alex Mauer
On 01/07/2010 09:45 AM, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
 Why is this all relevant?  There are good reasons why you might be
 interested in knowing that someone specific signed something public , of
 course (e.g. software signatures, advice on mailing lists or other fora,
 etc).  But for non-public communications: you *must* know who the remote
 endpoint is in order to have truly secret communications.  Without that
 knowledge, you are communicating with an unknown party, so who are you
 keeping things secret from?
 
 secret communications with an unknown remote party over a
 trivially-compromised communications medium are anything but secret.

They’re only unknown the first time you contact them.  It is useful to
know that the second time you contact f...@example.com it’s the same
party you contacted the first time.  Or that the phishing email you
received from b...@example.com didn’t actually come from the same party
you corresponded with last week.

Many people have correspondence with people they never have and never
will meet in person, and knowing that it’s always the same person is
still helpful.

-Alex Mauer “hawke”



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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-07 Thread Daniel Kahn Gillmor
On 01/07/2010 11:50 AM, Alex Mauer wrote:
 Many people have correspondence with people they never have and never
 will meet in person, and knowing that it’s always the same person is
 still helpful.

agreed, key continuity checking is itself a useful tool, and maybe more
OpenPGP implementations should provide ways to facilitate that for keys
that *aren't* well-bound to the Web of Trust by the user's current trust
database.

Key continuity checking doesn't solve the problem of initial contact,
though.  And it doesn't cope well with re-keying in the event of a
compromise.  So having functional, cryptographically-valid
infrastructure available to handle those important cases is a good thing.

--dkg



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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-07 Thread Robert J. Hansen
On 1/7/10 12:08 PM, Mario Castelán Castro wrote:
 very few really care about their privacity.

The fact that free credit reporting services are making a ton of
money, as are services like LifeLock and whatnot, plus the huge media
impact of identity theft, etc., all points to people knowing their
privacy is at risk and feeling stressed out about it.

However, most people lack the skills necessary to do anything about
their privacy, and lack the inclination (time, energy, or even
self-confidence) to do anything about their lack of skills.

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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-07 Thread Werner Koch
On Thu, 07 Jan 2010 10:50:35 -0600, Alex Mauer wrote:

 They’re only unknown the first time you contact them.  It is useful to
 know that the second time you contact f...@example.com it’s the same
 party you contacted the first time.  Or that the phishing email you

MUA authors should really add a feature supporting this.  In
particular storing the fingerprint of a key in the address book.  We
are talking about this for years but to my knowledge it has never been
implemented.


Salam-Shalom,

   Werner

-- 
Die Gedanken sind frei.  Ausnahmen regelt ein Bundesgesetz.


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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-07 Thread Mark H. Wood
On Thu, Jan 07, 2010 at 12:23:55PM -0500, Robert J. Hansen wrote:
 On 1/7/10 12:08 PM, Mario Castelán Castro wrote:
  very few really care about their privacity.
 
 The fact that free credit reporting services are making a ton of
 money, as are services like LifeLock and whatnot, plus the huge media
 impact of identity theft, etc., all points to people knowing their
 privacy is at risk and feeling stressed out about it.
 
 However, most people lack the skills necessary to do anything about
 their privacy, and lack the inclination (time, energy, or even
 self-confidence) to do anything about their lack of skills.

I think this hits way below the level of technology.  We haven't been
taught useful ways of thinking about our security and identity
w.r.t. the world we now live in.  When concepts like authentication
and trust are seriously discussed in grade school (perhaps in
smaller words :-) then we'll begin to build a society (as opposed to a
few experts and enthusiasts) which is prepared to use these tools
effectively.  As it is, few know *how* to care about their privacy.

-- 
Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer, enthusiast   mw...@iupui.edu
Friends don't let friends publish revisable-form documents.


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Re: Web of Trust itself is the problem

2010-01-07 Thread Faramir
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA256

Mario Castelán Castro escribió:
...
 I think the WoT and in general the cryptography is not widely used
 because few people really care about their privacity.

  I agree... one of my friends seem to think cryptography is useful for
mafia and pedophiles. Other friends just say interesting and try to
change the subject.

  Best Regards
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