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Re: [perpass] Commnets on draft-farrell-perpass-attack-00 was RE: perens-perpass-appropriate-response-01

Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@nic.fr> Thu, 05 December 2013 09:41 UTC

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Date: Thu, 05 Dec 2013 10:40:28 +0100
From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@nic.fr>
To: Bruce Perens <bruce@perens.com>
Message-ID: <20131205094027.GA10388@nic.fr>
References: <290E20B455C66743BE178C5C84F1240847E5103799@EXMB01CMS.surrey.ac.uk> <2C66A416-5F07-4803-A4C0-BB61734BA42E@nominum.com> <529FB216.7010504@perens.com> <CAMm+Lwjyp2eiVyqujnxiad9+iqUjkbJDhshB3+g-8fWkwgc5Vg@mail.gmail.com> <529FBC5F.7050700@perens.com> <CAMm+LwhnL-q_y6652c9zLbQOHf2MtJstRcP=SjomB-bjPAgZ8w@mail.gmail.com> <ba1f6f7a-9a62-4ae8-b317-b9571bc79f0b@email.android.com>
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Cc: perpass <perpass@ietf.org>, Phillip Hallam-Baker <hallam@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [perpass] Commnets on draft-farrell-perpass-attack-00 was RE: perens-perpass-appropriate-response-01
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On Wed, Dec 04, 2013 at 09:18:52PM -0800,
 Bruce Perens <bruce@perens.com> wrote 
 a message of 27 lines which said:

> I don't think we can say for sure that TLS is any hurdle to NSA's
> mass surveillance program at all.

Besides obvious remarks (secret agencies are secret), what is the
consequence to draw from this observation? That we should not use TLS
because it is possible that NSA has successfully attacked it? If so,
that would be a poor decision. First, there are other attackers, which
do not have the same resources as the NSA. Second, even the NSA cannot
break the law of physics (testing 2^256 possibilities take a lot of
time, even when you have money). Third, since we don't know, it seems
to me the reasonable thing to do would be to protect ourselves, just
in case.

[Insert here paranoid remarks about the NSA spreading the rumor that
it can break TLS so people won't encrypt and therefore the NSA will
not have to break TLS.]

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