[Cryptography] Explaining PK to grandma

[dan at geer.org]

"James A. Donald" writes:
 | On 2013-11-28 07:39, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
 | > The NSA can't compromise every endpoint without being noticed.
 | 
 | For defending against NSA, we don't really have to prevent active 
 | attacks.  We merely have to make it reasonably feasible for the 
 | seriously sophisticated paranoid to have a chance of detecting active 
 | attacks.
 | 
 | If very powerful adversary gets observed observing, it loses, since the 
 | information is valuable to its adversaries.
 | 
 | The guy in Nigeria, on the other hand, will have no hesitation in 
 | committing active attacks and will not much worry even if a very large 
 | proportion of them get detected.

+1

Absolutely correct.

--dan