On Sun, Dec 31, 2000 at 01:24:07PM -0600, Steven Hazel wrote:
> Scott Gregory Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> > The protocol should completely defeat the Man in the Middle attack
> > as well.
>
> Your protocol doesn't deal with MITM at all. It assumes that Alice
> already knows Bob's public key, and MITM only works in cases where
> both Alice and Bob fail to actually receive the other's public key.
> If we assume that Alice has been fooled, and has Mallory's public key
> instead of Bob's, your protocol does nothing to foil MITM. There is
> no known way to foil MITM without a prior shared secret.
>
> I'm not suggesting that this is a flaw in your protocol, just that
> this is a false claim about what the protocol accomplishes.
This requires that the *first* connection between Alice and Bob *MUST*
be MITMed. If this first connection is not MITMed, then MITM is not
possible between Alice and Bob. This is the case with other protocols
such as SSH (assuming that there is no initial shared secret).
--
Travis Bemann
Sendmail is still screwed up on my box.
My email address is really [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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