[Cryptography] upgrade mechanisms and policies

[Ray Dillinger]

On 04/16/2015 02:59 PM, ianG wrote:

> I agree with this.  I'm surprised it isn't celebrated more.  In all our
> time on the net, the crypto has been unfathomably rock solid as far as
> algorithms go.  The protocols have also been pretty good compared to the
> rest of it.

The crypto has been solid, except where deliberately sabotaged.

The protocols have been good.

The implementations have been problematic.

And the key management bites rocks.

Everybody says key management is too hard and complex, and then
because they think *that* is the problem, they simplify it until
it is neither hard, nor complex, nor useful.

Our so-called "authentication" protocols don't, by default, even
tell us whether there is any cryptographic evidence whatsoever
that someone is the same person we dealt with last time; only
whether some member of a huge world-wide, distributed set of
"Cert Authorities" whom we don't personally know, and who don't
even check, asserts that they are using the same name.

Cryptographic evidence of continuity is a relatively simple
thing to provide; but, oh horrors, somebody would have to manage
keys.... so we can't have that.

And to a first approximation, we don't even have any effective
privacy protocols that don't depend on the utterly helplessly
broken auth mechanism.

				Bear

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