[1848] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Signature Certificates
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Frantz)
Mon Nov 17 14:27:26 1997
In-Reply-To: <v03007802b0924ee052ea@[172.17.1.150]>
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 20:08:19 -0800
To: Rick Smith <smith@securecomputing.com>, Larry Layten <larry@ljl.com>,
cryptography@c2.net
From: Bill Frantz <frantz@netcom.com>
At 12:36 PM -0800 11/14/97, Rick Smith wrote:
>I tend to look at successful security as a set of properties that give the
>user a consistent lack of surprise in important matters ("don't steal my
>credit card number, don't wipe out my copies of X-Files .gifs, don't put
>checks in my Quicken output queue, etc.") and, equally important,
>confidence that this lack of surprising events will continue. Our
>confidence *should* be shaken each time we introduce new software into our
>desktop. After all, that's what we learn from software "upgrades." Yet this
>is the brave new world promised us by Java and ActiveX.
The annoying thing is the "we" through our purchasing decisions have shown
that what we will accept in an operating system is:
* Rich feature set.
* Very low initial cost.
* Minimal reliability
* Poor to nonexistent security
There have been OSs which solve all of these problems. The market has not
accepted them.
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