[Cryptography] Standards Trolls: Re: Bitcoin is a disaster.

Bill Frantz frantz at pwpconsult.com
Thu Jan 7 19:57:36 EST 2021


On 1/7/21 at 4:46 PM, greg at kinostudios.com (Greg) wrote:

>The same holds true today, that in most conversations, 
>discussions, lectures, research papers, etc., the terms 
>“distributed computing” have almost always referenced 
>systems where computers that are all owned and operated by a 
>single entity (read: centralized), are distributing their 
>compute resources across multiple machines.

In the circles I frequent, distributed always carries the 
assumption of mutual suspicion, which is not the normal 
assumption when all the nodes are owned and operated by the same entity.

Now, for optimal security, even if owned by the same entity, 
separate nodes should be suspicious of each other. And their 
privileges should be tightly constrained. If this advice had 
been followed, the SolarWinds attack would have been much less 
serious. Someone might have asked, "Why should a network 
monitoring and optimization application have the privilege of 
sending packets outside the managed network?"

Cheers - Bill

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