solving the wrong problem

[Peter Gutmann]

Adam Shostack <adam at homeport.org> writes:

>Let me propose another answer to Perry's question:
>   "Wearing a millstone around your neck to ward off vampires."
>
>This expresses both ends of a lose/lose proposition:
>   -- a burdensome solution
>   -- to a fantastically unimportant problem.

That sounds a bit like "unicorn insurance" ("We've taken out insurance against
unicorns, and we know that it's effective because we haven't been attacked by
any unicorns yet"), which is used for silly threat models.  However, this is
slightly different from what Perry was suggesting.  There seem to be at least
four subclasses of problem here:

1. "???" : A solution based on a misunderstanding of what the real problem is.

2. "Unicorn insurance": A solution to a nonexistent problem.

3. "???": A solution to a problem created artificially in order to justify its
   solution (or at least to justify publication of an academic paper
   containing a solution).

4. "PKI": A solution in search of a problem.

Peter.

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