Re: Bruce Schneier's Proposal to dedicate November meeting to savingthe Internet from the NSA

Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> Fri, 06 September 2013 14:16 UTC

Return-Path: <tytso@thunk.org>
X-Original-To: ietf@ietfa.amsl.com
Delivered-To: ietf@ietfa.amsl.com
Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ietfa.amsl.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B644A11E8159 for <ietf@ietfa.amsl.com>; Fri, 6 Sep 2013 07:16:17 -0700 (PDT)
X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at amsl.com
X-Spam-Flag: NO
X-Spam-Score: -3.6
X-Spam-Level:
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.6 tagged_above=-999 required=5 tests=[AWL=-1.000, BAYES_00=-2.599, NO_RELAYS=-0.001]
Received: from mail.ietf.org ([12.22.58.30]) by localhost (ietfa.amsl.com [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 4djhIxfSiETy for <ietf@ietfa.amsl.com>; Fri, 6 Sep 2013 07:16:17 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from imap.thunk.org (imap.thunk.org [IPv6:2600:3c02::f03c:91ff:fe96:be03]) by ietfa.amsl.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 10B6911E81A2 for <ietf@ietf.org>; Fri, 6 Sep 2013 07:16:17 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from root (helo=closure.thunk.org) by imap.thunk.org with local-esmtp (Exim 4.80) (envelope-from <tytso@thunk.org>) id 1VHwpa-000807-LO; Fri, 06 Sep 2013 14:16:14 +0000
Received: by closure.thunk.org (Postfix, from userid 15806) id 0C46D5807F9; Fri, 6 Sep 2013 10:16:13 -0400 (EDT)
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=simple/simple; d=thunk.org; s=mail; t=1378476973; bh=UWrFpPQNNoW0ct94Rp6Fq+hRxP2BMI5HbkbZqrYwsXY=; h=Date:From:To:Cc:Subject:References:In-Reply-To:From; b=q+vtfC0A58ek0ILHkyO2XV+l79JkOUxVnz83sGJ1/yIk1lwaYsgHkIWkjdfSnNVkU 4BRD5HP8cWVbKp4Bbqs8ZfcRfPwh6Ubu8+0HnuAHd0Kiar76acJfdX+6775UIY8/r4 VTnbSQwh2BS+qSWdplrEOeoBOOLJcXTWcyD62wLY=
Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2013 10:16:12 -0400
From: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>
To: Pete Resnick <presnick@qti.qualcomm.com>
Subject: Re: Bruce Schneier's Proposal to dedicate November meeting to savingthe Internet from the NSA
Message-ID: <20130906141612.GC1249@thunk.org>
References: <5F053C0B-4678-4680-A8BF-62FF282ADDCE@softarmor.com> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1309051743130.47262@hiroshima.bogus.com> <52293197.1060809@gmail.com> <CAMm+LwjdN478yyU=J7=GTpQxqtdgP8wtdEtna50X+WtA-bV3hg@mail.gmail.com> <52294BDC.4060707@gmail.com> <20130906033254.GH62204@mx1.yitter.info> <CAMm+Lwg9kJymBWaEXwZfQ=P5Uo-UmYoNvvzewnXjUu+mhg+QTQ@mail.gmail.com> <006001ceaad6$61f39640$4001a8c0@gateway.2wire.net> <5229D6B0.1040709@qti.qualcomm.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <5229D6B0.1040709@qti.qualcomm.com>
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15)
X-SA-Exim-Connect-IP: <locally generated>
X-SA-Exim-Mail-From: tytso@thunk.org
X-SA-Exim-Scanned: No (on imap.thunk.org); SAEximRunCond expanded to false
Cc: IETF Discussion Mailing List <ietf@ietf.org>
X-BeenThere: ietf@ietf.org
X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.12
Precedence: list
List-Id: IETF-Discussion <ietf.ietf.org>
List-Unsubscribe: <https://www.ietf.org/mailman/options/ietf>, <mailto:ietf-request@ietf.org?subject=unsubscribe>
List-Archive: <http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf>
List-Post: <mailto:ietf@ietf.org>
List-Help: <mailto:ietf-request@ietf.org?subject=help>
List-Subscribe: <https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf>, <mailto:ietf-request@ietf.org?subject=subscribe>
X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2013 14:16:17 -0000

On Fri, Sep 06, 2013 at 06:20:48AM -0700, Pete Resnick wrote:
> 
> In email,
> we insist that you authenticate the recipient's certificate before
> we allow you to install it and to start encrypting, and prefer to
> send things in the clear until that is done. That's silly and is
> based on the assumption that encryption isn't worth doing *until* we
> know it's going to be done completely safely.

Speaking of which, Jim Gettys was trying to tell me yesterday that
BIND refuses to do DNSSEC lookups until the endpoint client has
generated a certificate.  Which is bad, since out-of-box, a home
router doesn't have much in the way of entropy at that point, so you
shouldn't be trying to generate certificates at the time of the first
boot-up, but rather to delay until you've had enough of a chance to
gather some entropy.  (Or put in a real hardware RNG, but a
race-to-the-bottom in terms of BOM costs makes that not realistic.)  I
told him that sounds insane, since you shouldn't need a
certificate/private key in order to do digital signature verification.

Can someone please tell me that BIND isn't being this stupid?

					- Ted