[Cryptography] Moving forward on improving HTTP's security

[James A. Donald]

On 2013-11-22 18:58, ianG wrote:
> To a large extent is all comes back to WYTM? or what's your threat model?
>
> I'm assuming here, today, we are adding the NSA's mass surveillance into
> the equation as a valid and important threat model.  That's an
> assumption that can be challenged...
>
> If NSA mass surveillance is our threat model (addition), then the
> solution to that is probably mass opportunistic encryption, to force
> them to go active.


Because powerful organizations wish to observe without being observed, a 
moderate chance of detection of active attacks is sufficient to deter, 
sufficient to reduce the number of active attacks to very low levels

The more powerful the adversary, and the less powerful you, the more 
valuable information about the adversary, and the less valuable 
information about you, therefore, the less attractive active attacks 
that suffer some risk of detection.

The more powerful the adversary, the less attractive active attacks are 
to that adversary.

Any organization powerful enough to perform active attacks on the wire, 
is apt to be powerful enough that observation of its attacks provides 
information about the organization that likely is of more value than the 
information obtained by the attack.