More info in my AES128-CBC question

[Paul Hoffman]

At 2:04 PM -0700 4/21/07, David Wagner wrote:
>Hagai Bar-El writes:
>>What Aram wrote is "many of the attendees have very little security
>>experience", not: "there are no attendees with security experience".
>>There are people at the relevant OMA group who know enough about
>>security, but just like in the real world -- they are outnumbered by
>>plain "feature-set" people, and thus have to come up with very clear
>>arguments to get their way.
>
>So the people who don't know anything about security are reluctant to
>listen to those who do?  That's not a good sign. It may be standard
>operating procedure in groups like this, but that doesn't make it right.
>It's still dysfunctional and dangerrous.  If the committee doesn't have
>a commitment to security and is reluctant to listen to the experts,
>that's a risk factor.

In a typical standards-setting environment, non-security people are 
usually only willing to listen to security people up to a certain 
threshold. There are three normal scenarios:

- A security person proposes a good way to do security for the 
proposed protocol. A non-security person says (incorrectly) "I heard 
that doesn't work". The security person argues that it does work 
here, and the non-security person, not wanting to look foolish, digs 
in his heels. People get bored of hearing an argument they don't 
understand and make an arbitrary decision.

- A non-security person proposes a bad way to do security for the 
proposed protocol. A security person explains why that is insecure. 
The non-security person argues (sometimes correctly) that they did it 
in this other protocol so we should copy that, and the security 
person tries to explain why this is bad security. People get bored of 
hearing an argument they don't understand and make an arbitrary 
decision.

- A security person proposes two different ways to do security for 
the proposed protocol. The second is significantly faster than the 
first, but has worse security properties. People say "the first is 
good enough for our scenario" and pick it, often not even bothering 
to document the diminished security properties.

FWIW, this can happen when designing pure security protocols, 
swapping "non-security person" with "security novice" or "security 
tourist" or "security hobbiest" or "security poser".

>So why do people with no training in security think
>that they can freely ignore the advice of security professionals without
>any negative consequences?

Because doing so can get things finished earlier and/or make a more 
efficient protocol.

Same as it ever was.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium

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