Re: [perpass] "Its an attack" BCP draft

On Nov 20, 2013, at 8:24 PM, Ted Lemon <mellon@fugue.com> wrote:

> On Nov 20, 2013, at 6:19 PM, joel jaeggli <joelja@bogus.com> wrote:
>> bad actor is a value judgement. have no doubt that the intent of
>> surveillance is hostile with respect to the assumputions of the privacy
>> of one's communications.
> 
> It's a lot softer to say "we have to treat passive surveillance as an attack because there is no way to distinguish between cases where it is and is not an attack" than it is to say "passive surveillance is an attack."

Of course you can tell them apart -- simply require the passive surveillant to set the evil bit in all packets that they touch if it is an attack. If it is *not* an attack, they simply clear the evil bit. The originating party should randomly (with a good source of randomness (of course)) set the bit, and track which packets they did this on. The receiver should track which packets had it set. They then compare (out of band, and over a secure channel) which packets had the bit set, and can then determine, with some good probability of detection if someone was surveilling their traffic. 
I can extend this solution to other layers with an elegant solution involving checkboxes….

There,  I fixed it for you…

W

--
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
                -- H. L. Mencken

> 
> The document goes to some lengths not to examine the motivation of the eavesdropper, so finding a better term than "bad actor" makes sense to me.
> 
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--
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
                -- H. L. Mencken