Re: [saag] can an on-path attacker drop traffic?

[Dan Harkins <[e-mail]>]

On 10/3/20 9:42 PM, Peter Gutmann wrote:
> Dan Harkins <[e-mail]> writes:
>
>> Which is fine but what use do you see in a protocol that is secure against
>> this "limited attacker" but not against the more powerful attacker?
> Because it's far easier to deploy a relatively straightforward, realistic
> protocol secure against a general attack than it is to deply an awkward,
> complex, impractical protocol that's theoretically (but often not practically)
> secure against a more unlimited attacker.  To quote the end of John Gordon's
> joke:
>
>    Now most people in Alice's position would give up. Not Alice. She has
>    courage which can only be described as awesome. Against all odds, over a
>    noisy telephone line, tapped by the tax authorities and the secret police,
>    Alice will happily attempt, with someone she doesn't trust, whom she cannot
>    hear clearly, and who is probably someone else, to fiddle her tax returns
>    and to organize a coup d'etat, while at the same time minimizing the cost of
>    the phone call.
>
>    A coding theorist is someone who doesn't think Alice is crazy.
>
> I don't need a theoretically perfect protocol that's practically un-
> deployable, I just need something that's practical and good enough for the
> job.

   For some people the job includes tax avoidance and fomenting of coups.

   Dan.