Re: [saag] SHA-1 to SHA-n transition

[Eric Rescorla <[e-mail]>]

At Mon, 2 Mar 2009 12:16:57 -0600,
Nicolas Williams wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Mar 02, 2009 at 10:11:43AM -0800, Eric Rescorla wrote:
> > And the attacker will just pop up a dialog that says "our cool new UI
> > system is broken. Type your password into the form for now." This is
> > quite clear from [SDO+07].
> 
> Clearly.  Eventually this would no longer be true -- but we'll never get
> there if we don't provide any mechanisms that can overcome this.
> Certificates won't do because passwords remain, and will remain the
> lowest common denominator for a long time.
> 
> Unless small, portable devices with UIs (mobile phones!) become so
> ubiquitous (they're getting there) that they are as portable and ever
> present as passwords.  But I suspect the same will apply to that
> alternative: it will be years before we stop relying on passwords.
> 
> > > Any solution will require training, if nothing else because otherwise
> > > everyone will continue doing what we all do today: typing passwords into
> > > HTML forms, so that servers get cleartext passwords, and MITMs get all
> > > our money.
> > 
> > "We must do something. This is something. We must do this."
> 
> There are so many "this" we can do, and any one will take time.  Choose
> an approach.  Requiring that everyone have bluetooth- and NFC-equipped
> cell phones (and probably data rate service) and desktops and laptops
> (terminals of any kind) will certainly do, provided that such a
> requirement is reasonable -- we're getting closer to where it is.

We're now in the discussion I told myself I didn't want to have.
Suffice to say that for the reasons I've alredy indicated I don't
think the technical direction you propose is at all promising.

-Ekr