Crypto and UI issues

[Ben Laurie]

James A. Donald wrote:
>     --
> "James A. Donald"
>>> Let us imagine that SSH had certified keys.  Well, 
>>> certifying a key is bound to be complicated, and 
>>> things are bound to go wrong, and the name that you 
>>> bind it to is bound to be somewhat shifty.
> 
> Ben Laurie
>> I don't see why that would happen all that much,
> 
> It would happen at least as much as it happens with 
> https, and it happens enough with https that false 
> negatives enormously outweigh true negatives.

True, but I don't see false negatives very often with https at all. And
I visit far more web sites than I log into machines with ssh. So, I'm
not really buying this.

> "James A. Donald"
>>> So pretty soon users are frequently seeing error 
>>> dialogs - and so, pretty soon, are always clicking 
>>> through them.
> 
> Ben Laurie
>> Don't really buy this for what is, mostly, a protocol 
>> used by experts.
> 
> An expert will reflexively click through a dialog that 
> is almost certainly a false negative.

That's just not true.

>> True names of hosts is not a deep problem. Indeed, it 
>> is even possible to discover rigorously
> 
> but is the host with the true name the entity you have a 
> relationship with?
> 
> My two most recent logins were with "First National Bank
> of Omaha" and "Your IBM Savings plan"
> 
> Is "firstnational.com" the same entity as "First 
> National Bank of Omaha"?   Is 
> "https://lb22.resources.hewitt.com" the same entity as 
> "Your IBM Savings plan"

You have logins at banks and IBM?

-- 
http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html       http://www.thebunker.net/
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