[FoRK] Poisoned DNS and informal certificates

[Eugen Leitl]

On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 08:46:28PM +1100, silky wrote:

> eh? what does transistor price have to to with otp? otp is about a
> secure channel upfront, where the otp can be distributed, not but any
> sort of processing power.

Storage area on smartcards. Notice I never claimed one-time pads
are a smart idea, given mature state of the art in simple public-key
authentication smartcards. 

Almost every bank herabouts issues teller cards as smart cards.
For whatever reason, they don't issue matching readers with display
and keypad. Instead, they choose to spam me with warnings in
BOLD RED LETTERS to not enter the PIN/TAN (ironically, a one-time
pad) on their web banking interface, if you think something is phishy
(Tee-hee! End user should diagnose malware infestation. Yeah, sure).

> 
> 
> > But, there's no need, smartcards + secure readers
> > can't be compromised.
> 
> it can if the implementation is complex. which it is. anyway, to say

Would you hire a developer who can't get a trivial embedded application
(USB smartcard reader + PIN pad + display) right? I mean, we've got
very low standards already, and they're slipping still, but, surely,
we can't steep that low? Or can we? 

Smartcards are COTS.

> it "can't be compromised" is not very wise. it's better to discuss the

Are you familiar with cryptographic smartcard applications, and
external, hardened cryptographic transaction compartments?

> ways in which it is secure. you can't predict what will happen in the
> future, only what security it currently provides.

Does this mean you think smartcard-authenticated and industry-standard
encrypted transactions can be more easily attacked than unsecured endusers 
PCs?

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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