Strength in Complexity?

[Leichter, Jerry]

On Wed, 2 Jul 2008, Peter Gutmann wrote:

| Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:08:18 +1200
| From: Peter Gutmann <pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz>
| To: arshad.noor at strongauth.com, perry at piermont.com
| Cc: cryptography at metzdowd.com, dbrown at forsythe.com
| Subject: Re: Strength in Complexity?
| 
| "Perry E. Metzger" <perry at piermont.com> writes:
| 
| >No. In fact, it is about as far from the truth as I've ever seen.
| >No real expert would choose to deliberately make a protocol more 
| >complicated.
| 
| IPsec.  Anything to do with PKI.  XMLdsig.  Gimme a few minutes and
| I can provide a list as long as your arm.  Protocol designers *love*
| complexity.  The more complex and awkward they can make a protocol,
| the better it has to be.
The cynical among us might rephrase that as:  "The more complex and
awkward they can make a protocol, the better it will be at generating
future consulting work."  :-(

(I don't think that applies to your list, where the root causes have
more to do with design-by-committee and the consequent need to make
everyone happy.)
							-- Jerry


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