[148285] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: [Cryptography] Explaining PK to grandma
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Nico Williams)
Tue Nov 26 19:27:41 2013
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 18:26:10 -0600
From: Nico Williams <nico@cryptonector.com>
To: Peter Gutmann <pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz>
In-Reply-To: <E1VlSJP-0002ZA-HV@login01.fos.auckland.ac.nz>
Cc: cryptography@metzdowd.com, hallam@gmail.com, radix42@gmail.com
Errors-To: cryptography-bounces+crypto.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@metzdowd.com
On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 12:44:59PM +1300, Peter Gutmann wrote:
> Phillip Hallam-Baker <hallam@gmail.com> writes:
> > [...]
>
> +1 to all the above. I've been a bit behind on email recently so you got
> there first with a good summary of the problem, but if your secure email
> scheme has a step 0 of "explain to granny how secure email works" then you may
> as well not bother going to step 1, whatever your step 1 is meant to be.
> Secure email has to work like Skype, you install it, you click on "Call
> <insert-name-of-grandchild>", and it works.
Right, secure e-mail is a bit of an oxymoron. You can have other secure
things, but e-mail, not so much. And do explain this go grandma:
all your base belong to government [and your vendor(s) [*]]
[*] If she can grok any explanation of "vendor".
And as someone pointed out, if you wish to store bits and pieces of non-
e-mail secure conversations, pretty soon you're right back at something
that looks like e-mail, but as long as exchanges between peers are
interactive you have a shot at being secure modulo caveats that grandma
can understand (see above).
Nico
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