On Tuesday 25 March 2003 22:34, Steven M. Bellovin wrote: > Let me quote what the (U.S.) 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals said in the > T.J. Hooper case (60 F.2d 737, 1932): > > Indeed in most cases reasonable prudence is in face common prudence; > but strictly it is never its measure; a whole calling may have unduly lagged > in the adoption of new and available devices. > It may never set its own tests, however persuasive be its usages. > Courts must in the end say what is required; there are precautions > so imperative that even their universal disregard will not > excuse their omission.... > > But here there was no custom at all as to receiving sets; some had > them, some did not; the most that can be urged is that they had > not yet become general. Certainly in such a case we need not > pause; when some have thought a device necessary, at least we may > say that they were right, and the others too slack. > > Given that there were published warnings of *practical* MITM attacks (my > papers, Radia Perlman's dissertation on secure routing, Lawrence > Joncheray's paper on TCP hijacking, etc.), I have no doubt whatsoever > what a (U.S.) court would have ruled if there had ever been a real attack.
I'm sorry, I won't be able to do more than speculate on this, and I wasn't aware of your legal background, so please take the below as "not advice." I.e., IANAL and all that. Courts are notoriously difficult to predict. That's why they say "take legal advice" :-) And, it may very well be that Netscape took legal advice, and at that time, it did seem that MITM protection at the level of CA-certificates was a reasonable choice (c.f., David Wagner's post) amongst other reasonable choices, so I don't think there is any doubt that what was done back in '94 was reasonable in the circumstances. But, on the face of it, you appear to be saying that because the court saw warnings then it ruled that the warnings were sufficient. I don't read that at all. I see that interpretatation as a Chicken Little argument. This opens the way to Info-war style consultants saying that because you were warned, you are liable. That above snippet says "there are precautions so imperative" which implies the court had already reached its opinion on the merits of this protection, which is precisely what this discussion has aimed to address. In fact, the court said very clearly that it is the one to decide what the test is - not the industry. The court then went on to say that, as it found the precautions imperitive, and as the industry had warned, albeit contraversially, then, it concluded, relying on the lack of industry custom and agreement as a defence was insufficient. So, with respect, I would say that the above should be read as "do not rely on discordant others, be they so-called experts or Chicken Littles on either side, in applying your own prudential measures," which is quite the reverse of your reading. Now, the above is speculation; not having the full ruling and the full training, one can't do more. But, to take mere warnings as liabilities is to forgoe ones profession as an engineer, and hand ones responsibilities over on the one hand to the religious seers of doom, and on the other, to the lawyers. The ludicrousness of this approach is perhaps more crystallised when we consider that half of the world's web servers are shipped for free (c.f Apache). The crypto components are still, AFAIK, dealt with outside America for the most part. And, a growing share of browsers are now shipping for free or near-free. We've seen over the last year or so, Konqueror, Mozilla, and Safari rise to take back the forgotten gauntlet of "browser for the rest of us." These are not sold products. There are no contracts that imply security. The world of open source is not necessarily going to be treated in the courts the same as a purchased product with implicit liabilities of a consumer nature. I grant that America may be moving towards a world where Eric Y or Ben L will be norieged and hailed before a california court in some case for inadequate MITM protection, but, I personally don't see that as a world that I would accept on the face value of some legal handwaving. Is that really what we want for our Internet? -- iang PS: It is apropos that the CA industry uses the same approach in trying to define industry custom as sufficient; see Jane K Winn, _Courriers without Luggage_ for her expose of the fallacy in this. In contrast to your implied claim that SSL providers would be at risk if they didn't do the MITM approach, I'd suspect that CAs are on the hook, because of the very arguments that Winn and, now, Hooper advance. ) --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
