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[anonsec] PAS issue 14 - leap of faith



On Mon, Mar 27, 2006 at 12:50:29PM -0800, Joe Touch wrote:
> Nicolas Williams wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 27, 2006 at 10:35:44AM -0800, Joe Touch wrote:
> >>> LoF isn't merely about accepting unauthenticated peers -- in the context
> >>> of SSH, for example, it's about interactively asking if a peer's public
> >>> key is "valid" and then recording it so that subsequently no such
> >>> interaction is necessary.
> >> This is the part I don't quite understand.
> >>
> >> Where's the LOF?
> > 
> > It's what we as human users to do: "validate" (as if they even usually
> > could, via some oob way) a peer's public key so that the application can
> > create a pseudonymous-ID-(public key)-to-peer-address/ID/name/... binding.
> 
> That seems like a very specific thing - out-of-band validation. There's
> no leap there - the user can (and seems like they're expected to)
> validate the key out-of-band.

No, they usually can't, and even more commonly don't.  They take a
"leap": "I'm not being attacked"; and usually this leap works out fine
(which teaches them to keep this up).


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