User interface, security, and "simplicity"

[Ian G]

David Wagner wrote:

...
> This struck me as poor design, not good design.  Asking the user to
> make these kinds of choices seems like the kind of thing that only a
> cryptographer could consider sensible.  In this day and age, software
> should not be asking users to choose ciphers.  Rather, the software
> should just pick a sensible high-grade security level (e.g., AES-128,
> RSA-1024 or RSA-2048) and go with that, and avoid bothering the user.
> Why even offer "low" as an option?  (And this "export" business sounds
> like a throwback to a decade ago; why is that still there?)
> 
> Good crypto is cheap.  Asking a user is expensive and risky.
> 
>> So I think there should be a broad design bias towards *implicit* correct
>> behaviour in all system features, with rope available for advanced users
>> to *explicitly* craft more complex use-cases. Once you have that, practical
>> security is not too difficult.
> 
> Amen.  I know of quite a few software packages that could use more of
> that philosophy.


I think we are all coming around to the view that any 
choices are practically messy and dangerous, no matter how 
nice they look on paper.

The way I put it, there is only one mode, and it is secure. 
  From there on, it only gets better.  Obligatory rant:

http://iang.org/ssl/h3_there_is_only_one_mode_and_it_is_secure.html

iang

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