On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 7:42 AM, Jonathan Schleifer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > "Eric Rescorla" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> They will if the software just does it. > > So the software automatically signs people I talk to? I also talk to > people whom I don't trust. This is a bad idea. Really bad.
I don't think you and I are talking about the same thing when we talk about signing keys. I'm talking about self-signed certs, which is what I read the message you were responding to be talking about. I agree that having users sign each others keys is problematic for a number of reasons. >> I must say, I find SAS fairly user unfriendly as well. At least with a >> fingerprint >> type mechanism I can go out of band to someone's web site and check >> the fingerprint. With SAS, I have to actually call them on the phone. > > Having a short, 5 digits long SAS is far more userfriendly than having > a full fingerprint. While I agree that manually comparing a short string is easier than manually comparing a long string, that's not the only tradeoff to be made here, and as I said, the use model for an SAS is inherently a lot more problematic than the use model for a fingerprint. More on this at: http://www.educatedguesswork.org/2008/08/authentication.html > Calling is also an extra security thing. You > *HEAR* that it's the person you want to talk to. Yes, it's a highly inconvenient security thing, which is why I find it implausible that people will do it. I, for one, use XMPP with lots of people whom I've never spoken on the phone with. -Ekr
