[Cryptography] [cryptography] NIST Workshop on Elliptic Curve Cryptography Standards

[Dennis E. Hamilton]

This is probably not a great list for relying on hyperbole.

  -- replying inline to --
From: cryptography [mailto:cryptography-bounces+dennis.hamilton=acm.org at metzdowd.com] On Behalf Of John Levine
Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2015 17:18
To: cryptography at metzdowd.com
Cc: ben at links.org
Subject: Re: [Cryptography] [cryptography] NIST Workshop on Elliptic Curve Cryptography Standards

>> What?  Web servers and browsers have supported SNI for years.  If
>> you're worried about software so old that it doesn't, you're talking
>> about Windows XP and Safari 3.0.
>
>And XP's end of life was when? I'll save you looking it up: April
>2014. Apparently "so old" is 1 year! Assuming, of course, as we know
>didn't happen, everyone believed the end of life and stopped using XP.

Long before that the usual advice in the web world was to forget about
XP and IE 6.  The number of people using it was too small to be
worth worrying about, and if they're that out of date, they're
likely not users you care about.

<orcmid>
  As of one April 2015 report Windows XP accounts for 16% of 
  browser activity by desktop operating systems.  (Windows 7 is
  at 59%).  That XP share is greater than all Mac OS X and Linux
  desktop browsing combined, 
  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Desktop_and_laptop_computers>.
     You can see the diversity of measures at different times 
  in this Wikipedia article as well.
     It would be good to have a handle on whatever ground truth 
  is available for these kinds of assessments and not the wishful
  thinking and narrow perspective of various partisans.
     Clearly, the tablet+mobile activity tilts in an entirely
  different way.  The article apparently does not provide a way
  to estimate the relative proportions of those in comparison
  with the desktop usage.  (That is, there is no relative
  weighting of the categories in the 
  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Market_share_by_category>
  analysis.
     There are many reasons why someone would keep XP running
  and the concern for the security community might better be
  addressed to the prospective zombie usage of those systems.  
</orcmid>

R's,
John



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