Gutmann Soundwave Therapy

[Eric Rescorla]

At Mon, 04 Feb 2008 14:29:50 +1000,
James A. Donald wrote:
> 
> James A. Donald wrote:
>  >> I have figured out a solution, which I may post here
>  >> if you are interested.
> 
> Ian G wrote:
>  > I'm interested.  FTR, zooko and I worked on part of
>  > the problem, documented briefly here:
>  > http://www.webfunds.org/guide/sdp/index.html
> 
> I have posted "How to do VPNs right" at
> http://jim.com/security/how_to_do_VPNs.html
> 
> It covers somewhat different ground to that which your
> page covers, focusing primarily on the problem of
> establishing the connection.
> 
> 	"humans are not going to carry around large
> 	strong secrets every time either end of the
> 	connection restarts.  In fact they are not going
> 	to transport large strong secrets any time ever,
> 	which is the flaw in SSL and its successors such
> 	as IPSec and DTLS

This paragraph sure is confused.

1. IPsec most certainly is not a successor to SSL. On
   the contrary, IPsec predates SSL.

2. TLS doesn't require you to carry around strong secrets.
   I refer you to TLS-SRP [RFC 5054]

3. For that matter, even if you ignore SRP, TLS supports
   usage models which never require you to carry around
   strong secrets: you preconfigure the server's public
   key and send a password over the TLS channel. Since
   this is the interface SSH uses, the claim that humans
   won't do it is manifestly untrue.


-Ekr

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