User interface, security, and "simplicity"

[Perry E. Metzger]

pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann) writes:
>>I am left with the strong suspicion that SSL VPNs are "easier to configure
>>and use" because a large percentage of their user population simply is not
>>very sensitive to how much security is actually provided.
>
> They're "easier to configure and use" because most users don't want to have to
> rebuild their entire world around PKI just to set up a tunnel from A to B.

I'm one of those people who uses OpenVPN instead of IPSEC, and I'm one
of the people who helped create IPSEC.

Right now, to use SSH to remotely connect to a machine using public
keys, all I have to do is type "ssh-keygen" and copy the locally
generated public key to a remote machine's authorized keys file.
When there is an IPSEC system that is equally easy to use I'll switch
to it.

Until then, OpenVPN let me get started in about five minutes, and the
fact that it is less than completely secure doesn't matter much to me
as I'm running SSH under it anyway.

Perry

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