<story><title>Heartbleed should bleed X.509 to death</title><url>http://lorddoig.svbtle.com/heartbleed-should-bleed-x509-to-death</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lorddoig</author><text>So Granny huffs and puffs and calls me, trusts my key through the sexy new UI I talked about and is done with it.&lt;p&gt;I specifically said that PGP may not be the solution, but what we have now is just ridiculous if you really think about it.  We have &lt;i&gt;no choice&lt;/i&gt; but to trust 4 companies on precisely nothing but their word.  Even if you mistrust their word - and I do - there is &lt;i&gt;no&lt;/i&gt; alternative choice.&lt;p&gt;Security always boils down to trust in the end, and the status quo &lt;i&gt;outsources it&lt;/i&gt;.  It is the definition of stupid.</text></item><item><author>hendzen</author><text>Not going to happen. The WoT is a usability nightmare for the 99.9% of nontechnical users that don&amp;#x27;t care about things like &amp;#x27;p2p&amp;#x27; &amp;amp; &amp;#x27;decentralized&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;Do you really think Granny is going to be happy with the tablet she bought that can&amp;#x27;t connect to her online banking account out of the box? Have fun explaining to her that she needs to exchange keys with enough trusted intermediaries to have a valid trust path to her bank. I&amp;#x27;m sure there plenty of key signing parties happening at the &amp;#x27;ol retirement home.&lt;p&gt;Or maybe you can explain to Granny why her money was stolen when a scammer managed to compromise one of her trusted keys and then created a compromised subgraph in the WoT leading to a fake certificate to her bank?&lt;p&gt;The WoT is a usability nightmare. Sure, the PKI isn&amp;#x27;t too great, but it&amp;#x27;s what we have, and it is currently more practical than any other solution out there. Security needs to be usable to be useful.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: for a good rebuttal to the OP, read this blog post by Mike Hearn which covers the issues I raised and more: &lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/bitcoin-security-functionality/b64cf5912aa7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;medium.com&amp;#x2F;bitcoin-security-functionality&amp;#x2F;b64cf5912a...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>exelius</author><text>What happens when someone far away from you in the WoT is compromised by say, a botnet? Now you get compromised because a source you verified through your WoT loaded a malware-infested piece of software on your mobile device. So it&amp;#x27;s not necessarily any more secure.&lt;p&gt;The status quo outsources trust because that&amp;#x27;s what you do in an economy. We trust the government to secure the value of our money. We trust banks with storing that money, and we trust that the government again will make sure that they do.&lt;p&gt;If you want to see what happens when you DON&amp;#x27;T outsource trust, look at how terrorist networks operate. They only deal with trusted associates who know each other personally, they only communicate through trusted couriers, and they live in fucking caves. It&amp;#x27;s not exactly conducive to a modern economy.&lt;p&gt;You have to outsource some level of trust. Otherwise you waste so much productivity on maintaining and verifying your trust network that you can&amp;#x27;t actually do anything worthwhile with it. I think the real question is &amp;quot;to whom?&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;for what purposes?&amp;quot; If you need something to be really secure, then you should probably do an in-person key exchange. For the majority of things people do you only need &amp;quot;mostly secure&amp;quot; because there are other protection measures in place in case the communication is fraudulent.</text></comment>
<story><title>Heartbleed should bleed X.509 to death</title><url>http://lorddoig.svbtle.com/heartbleed-should-bleed-x509-to-death</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lorddoig</author><text>So Granny huffs and puffs and calls me, trusts my key through the sexy new UI I talked about and is done with it.&lt;p&gt;I specifically said that PGP may not be the solution, but what we have now is just ridiculous if you really think about it.  We have &lt;i&gt;no choice&lt;/i&gt; but to trust 4 companies on precisely nothing but their word.  Even if you mistrust their word - and I do - there is &lt;i&gt;no&lt;/i&gt; alternative choice.&lt;p&gt;Security always boils down to trust in the end, and the status quo &lt;i&gt;outsources it&lt;/i&gt;.  It is the definition of stupid.</text></item><item><author>hendzen</author><text>Not going to happen. The WoT is a usability nightmare for the 99.9% of nontechnical users that don&amp;#x27;t care about things like &amp;#x27;p2p&amp;#x27; &amp;amp; &amp;#x27;decentralized&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;Do you really think Granny is going to be happy with the tablet she bought that can&amp;#x27;t connect to her online banking account out of the box? Have fun explaining to her that she needs to exchange keys with enough trusted intermediaries to have a valid trust path to her bank. I&amp;#x27;m sure there plenty of key signing parties happening at the &amp;#x27;ol retirement home.&lt;p&gt;Or maybe you can explain to Granny why her money was stolen when a scammer managed to compromise one of her trusted keys and then created a compromised subgraph in the WoT leading to a fake certificate to her bank?&lt;p&gt;The WoT is a usability nightmare. Sure, the PKI isn&amp;#x27;t too great, but it&amp;#x27;s what we have, and it is currently more practical than any other solution out there. Security needs to be usable to be useful.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: for a good rebuttal to the OP, read this blog post by Mike Hearn which covers the issues I raised and more: &lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/bitcoin-security-functionality/b64cf5912aa7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;medium.com&amp;#x2F;bitcoin-security-functionality&amp;#x2F;b64cf5912a...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nemothekid</author><text>Calls who? Why should Granny trust you? What you described is no different, Granny is still outsourcing her trust to some 3rd party.&lt;p&gt;Or are we working under the assumption that every Granny has a grandson who is just as technically competent as you are? The fact of the matter is, PGP has just enough friction that if implemented correctly, will still lead to the vast majority of non-technical users simply signing up to some SaaS to handle it for them, and with that you end up in square one, where a handful of SaaS providers are the gatekeepers to everyones identity.</text></comment>