Re: [MLS] multiple devices per user?

[Simon Friedberger <[e-mail]>]

Hi Jon and Eric!


On 25.03.2018 00:08, Jon Millican wrote:
>
> I’d like to second Ekr’s points here. To provide a concrete use case,
> in Facebook Messenger, we want Secret Conversations to work for a user
> as soon as they log in on a new device. This somewhat blurs the
> boundary between device loss/recovery and concurrent use as it is used
> for both situations; but we don’t want to require existing device to
> authorise new devices as – to be perfectly frank – we’re not convinced
> that most people would actually do this, and it puts a potential
> usability barrier in the way of people using the E2E mode.
>

Won't this give us e2e encryption but no e2e security against active
attackers? If we remove authentication in favor of ux what's to stop an
mitm attacker?


Eric:
> it's that there are use cases in
> which users want to add a new device without an existing device being
> online, and these are incompatible with type #0 designs.

I'm not sure that devices being added is such a common occurence that it
would prohibit asking for authorization from a different device.


Eric:
> Generally, I wouldn't expect them to take any action at all. It's a user's
> responsibility to ensure that the right number of devices are registered
> to their account, just as its common for the number of Web browsers
> one has attached to ones Gmail account.

How would a user find out which devices are registered to their account
when they don't have to authorize them? And if it can be done, isn't
"authorize-on-first-use" more user-friendly than expecting that users
will maintain a list of authorized devices, i.e. check at random
intervals if the list is still correct?


Best Regards,
Simon