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Re: [GOATSE SECURITY] Clench: Goatse's way to say "screw you" to certificate authorities

From: Shreyas Zare <shreyas () secfence com>
Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2010 18:58:53 +0530
Hi,

I totally agree with Tim. SSL is fragile but the mentioned protocol
basically creates the same problems which is why PKI was created to solve.

Regards,

Shreyas Zare

Sr. Information Security Researcher
Secfence Technologies
www.secfence.com


On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 1:00 AM, Tim <tim-security () sentinelchicken org>wrote:


This is no different then installing a client cert


Yes, exactly. This is as equally secure as installing a client cert.
Except it is achieved without a client cert, using only a password, in
a manner that can be more easily scaled to lots of users.


Um... I think you have it backwards.  Public key crypto scales,
symmetric does not.  How many unique passwords do you use for the
dozens/hundreds of websites you have an account with?  Scalability
with people is what matters.  Current websites and client software do
not make it easy to use one certificate for many sites, but this
strategy scales much better.

The core difference between the two is that the number of unique keys
needed to carry on private converstations in a group of entities grows
O(n^2) with symmetric keys and O(n) with public keys.  I'm sure you
realize this though.

tim

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_______________________________________________
Full-Disclosure - We believe in it.
Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html
Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/
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