On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 07:13:54PM -0700, Bernard Aboba wrote: > > It used to be easy to dismiss opportunistic security as a waste of time, it is now clear to most that it is .... > > [BA] Merely a waste of money. > "Opportunistic unauthenticated encryption" that does not defend > against man-in-the-middle attacks has no value against targeted > surveillance. So if the goal is to protect dissidents, look > elsewhere. Unfortunately, the line between "targeted surveillance" > and "mass surveillance" is a thin one. For me OS is not about anti-PM, or at least not mainly anti-PM. See below. > The value against mass surveillance is predicated on the assumption > that "large scale targeted surveillance" is infeasible or that the > cost of large scale meta-data collection can be increased to the point > where it is too costly even for a nation-state. > > The first assertion, is likely to be proven false by the first gear to > include built-in man-in-the-middle attack support. Care to wager > which appears first, carrier-class gear supporting man-in-the-middle > attacks, or significant deployment of "opportunistic" encryption? MITM HW, if need be, will materialize and will be deployed. I don't doubt this. That doesn't mean that active attacks are not more costly than passive ones, or that it's not worth providing protection against passive attacks. Attackers not operating under the color of law can only really build a massive PM active attack system by building edge-most router botnets, which seems unlikely to go unnoticed, those routers almost certainly lacking the necessary CPU oomph... Therefore OS can go a long distance relative to criminals in many situations. Sovereign powers will be able to do build active PM systems, no doubt. But if the end-state for OS is something like DANE then the sovereigns will either have to MITM DNSSEC or force services to furnish them with authentication keys. Both of those are potentially very expensive politically (because they will be noticeable intrusions). If not, then they will at least be clarifying. If a nation's people don't mind their government monitoring them, they still ought to be able to get protection relative to third parties (routers, criminals, foreign powers). Nico --