Who's afraid of Mallory Wolf?

[Ian Grigg]

On Tuesday 25 March 2003 15:22, Bill Stewart wrote:
> I get the impression that we're talking at cross-purposes here,
> with at least two different discussions.

Yep.  I haven't counted them up yet, but
the full discussion includes at least 6
disparate threads.  The challenge is to
not arbitrarily switch from one thread to
another without losing the context of the
first.

The way I got where (I think) I am is this:

  Fact:  The SSL cert that is required for
  the server is expensive.

  Question:  Why do we have to pay that
  expense, and what happens if we use a
  self-signed cert?

  Answer:  "the MITM!"   "Spoofing!"

OK, so now let's challenge the assumptions:

  Question: What is the MITM?
  And why should we care?

And, when we've answered that question,
let's plug that truth back into the 1st
question.  (And, the same for spoofing.)


> Let's look at several cases:
> 
> 1 - Sites that have SSL and Expensive Certs that need them and need MITM 
> protection
> 1a - 	These sites, but with other security holes making it easy to break in.
> 1b - 	These sites, broken by SSL bugs or browser bugs
> 2 - Sites that have SSL and Expensive Certs that don't need them,
> 	as long as they've got some crypto like self-signed certs,
> 	which don't give MITM protection
> 3 - Sites that don't have SSL today because it's too annoying,
> 	for which crypto would be useful,
> 	and ADH or self-signed certs would be good enough,
> 	because MITM isn't a big threat for them.
> 4 - Sites that don't need crypto.

Fantastic!  a 2 x 2:

              GOT                HTTP
              SSL+               ONLY
              cert

Want          
Crypto        1
Want          (may have bugs)
certs


Want          2                  3
Crypto
(adh/ssc)


Don't                            4
want
Crypto

Totals:       1%                 99%



Hmm, it drew out as a 2 x 3 (only in fixed font).

So, I wonder what the totals on the right would
be?  How many people want crypto/MITM, how many
would be happy with crypto/no MITM protection,
and how many don't want any crypto?


-- 
iang

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