[Cryptography] Fwd: OPENSSL FREAK

[Bill Frantz]

On 4/5/15 at 10:03 AM, huitema at huitema.net (Christian Huitema) wrote:

>>Backward compatibility is just a name for downgrade attacks that
>>haven't cost enough money to stop yet.
>
>Engineering is about tradeoff. That includes balancing 
>immediate cost and future risk. Automated kill switches negate 
>that. They only make sense if the risk is so high that there is 
>no possible balancing. How often have we seen that?

What I find most useful in this discussion is the idea that you 
can send an implementation a message and cause it to permanently 
turn off an option. If we have an implementation which is 
widespread in a corporation, and we wish to turn off an option, 
sending it a suitably signed message might be a viable option. 
The big questions are:

   Who gets to sign the message.

   Why didn't we just upgrade the software.

I think there may be useful application areas where there are 
good answers to these questions. The IoT seems a likely place. 
However, I still think the option of regular software upgrades 
is probably a better option for most uses.

Cheers - Bill

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