Subject: RE: Fwd: [IP] A Simpler, More Personal Key to Protect Online Mess ages - msg#00045

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Re: Fwd: [IP] A Simpler, More Personal Key to Protect Online Messages

At 05:30 PM 7/8/2003, Nomen Nescio wrote: One difference is that with the identity-based crypto, once a sender has acquired the software and the CA's public key, he doesn't have to contact the CA to get anyone's "certificate". He can encrypt to anyone without having to contact the CA, just based on the email address. Your proposed substitute doesn't allow for this. True, but how valuable is that, given that you can't send the actual message without contacting a server? I suppose one can construct theoretical scenarios where that's a benefit, but it seems to be a pretty narrow niche to me. > but you don't need goofy new crypto to accomplish it. The Weil pairing hardly constitutes "goofy new crypto". They are doing all kinds of cool stuff with pairings these days, including privacy-enhancing technology such as public keys with built-in forward secrecy. I retract the "goofy". My point was that the market is incredibly reluctant to adopt new technology: if you can solve a problem with components known to the marketplace, you're much more likely to be successful than if you invent something new. This is above and beyond any reluctance to adopt new cryptographic technology based on concerns about security. Even if the Weil pairing is known to be 100% secure and tested, any new solution has to, as a practical matter, leap a huge hurdle to overcome available, well known alternatives. I've spent years attempting to get the market to accept alternative security solutions, and I can testify to how high that hurdle is. In my opinion, identity-based cryptography has insufficient upside to overcome that hurdle, especially given that it is not without its downsides (escrowed private keys, no protection against key compromise). - Tim --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx

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Re: LibTomNet [v0.01]

At 05:42 PM 7/8/2003, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote: I believe the Certicom library is somewhere around there in size, and it is a pretty extensive implementation. Costs money though. ;-) IIRC, the embedded SSL library I wrote (with Chris Hawk) at Certicom was < 64K of 68K code (we originally wrote it for PalmOS devices), including all crypto, for a fully-compliant SSL 3.0 & X.509v3 implementation (client-side SSL only, with a profiled subset of SSL ciphersuites and X.509 features, of course). And it could run with a RAM usage of substantially less than 10K/connection. And we wrote it in less than a month (it was our third or fourth time implementing SSL and X.509, though). The complete Certicom library is somewhat bigger, but it's got a lot of flexibility, (modular crypto interface, etc.), and code size wasn't a concern on desktop/server platforms. - Tim --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx

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Re: Fwd: [IP] A Simpler, More Personal Key to Protect Online Messages

Tim Dierks writes: > I don't think it's an interesting solution. I don't see any interesting > application that's possible with this system which you couldn't do with > existing public-key cryptography: for example, I could write a protocol & > software where you could request a public key from a server for any e-mail > address; if the user didn't already have an enrolled key, my trusted server > would generate one and enroll it on their behalf. When they got an > encrypted message, they could contact me, authenticate themselves, and I'd > send them their secret key. One difference is that with the identity-based crypto, once a sender has acquired the software and the CA's public key, he doesn't have to contact the CA to get anyone's "certificate". He can encrypt to anyone without having to contact the CA, just based on the email address. Your proposed substitute doesn't allow for this. > but you don't need goofy new crypto to accomplish it. The Weil pairing hardly constitutes "goofy new crypto". They are doing all kinds of cool stuff with pairings these days, including privacy-enhancing technology such as public keys with built-in forward secrecy. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx

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Re: Fwd: [IP] A Simpler, More Personal Key to Protect Online Messages

Show me an enterprise/person who would like to have their private keys escrowed by a third-party, with all the liability/collusion/blackmail potential that goes with it, and I'll show you a client for VS. There are IMO many (and better) schemes when you want your private keys to be known by a TTP. Including PKI. Cheers, Ed Gerck --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx