On 9/19/06, Harald Alvestrand <harald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Robert Sayre wrote: > > I don't disagree. The IETF might first try to design an authentication > feature worth requiring. None of the current options are at all > satisfactory. In fact TLS + HTTP Basic Auth is pretty interoperable, secure against quite a few attacks, and widely deployed.
Ah, this is the "wink, wink" approach to mandatory authentication. Specify something no one uses. Here is my bank's web site: <http://www.chase.com/>. It looks like a phishing attack.
That says something frightening about the kind of impression we give to people who work on making usable security. "Usable" needs to be an important component of "satisfactory". (He's quite aware of the obvious security defects of his scheme, btw. It's a tradeoff.)
Fully agree. Many non-standard schemes are more secure and more usable than the IETF options, though. Tony Finch wrote:
The implementations fail to use the negotiation features to work securely when possible, and instead baffle users with terrible user interfaces bristling with options.
Negotiation features don't work very well in practice so client vendors don't rely on them. -- Robert Sayre _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf