Re: Mandatory encryption *is* theater

On 8/25/13 10:43 PM, Roberto Peon wrote:
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>
>
> On Sun, Aug 25, 2013 at 1:27 PM, Salvatore Loreto 
> <salvatore.loreto@ericsson.com <mailto:salvatore.loreto@ericsson.com>> 
> wrote:
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>     On 8/25/13 10:18 PM, Roberto Peon wrote:
>>     We've seen that the network delays bytes on some ports because
>>     (we assume) of inspecting proxies, even when the data is
>>     incomprehensible to the proxy.
>     maybe I am naif but the delay can be just because the proxies
>     (lets just talk of HTTP here) expect HTTP traffic and they get
>     confuse when they see something else
>
>
> Oh it was worse that that :) Put correct HTTP over port 80 and it 
> often won't end up at the other side because you used a portion of the 
> spec that is not often used.
correct, there are around stacks that are incomplete or not very well 
tested and it is a problem, I concur
but that is for historical reasons and most likely the main reason of 
this situation is because some portion of the spec has not been used so 
often (if at all) till now!
if they start to be used, things will change even if slower compared to 
the browser update

>
>
>>     If the bytes are merely signed then the bytes are visible and
>>     modification is still performed-- the modification becomes
>>     time-domain, e.g. dropping/delaying packets, etc.
>
>     If we let always possible to discover the presence of a proxy by
>     the client... and the client realize that dropping/delaying
>     packets is much higher
>     when there is that proxy in between ... it is just a matter of the
>     time and the market will decide
>
>
> The market is efficient only when there are numerous choices and the 
> barrier to entry is low. That isn't true for things like this. The 
> endpoints currently have no choice about whether or not some portion 
> of the network is deploying what hardware/software, and often there is 
> only once choice of vendor. The only real choices clients/servers have 
> is what the bytes look like when they're sent.
there are different markets involved here,
from the client prospective you can choose different browsers or 
different ISP
the IPS has also the possibility to change the vendor that provide 
hardware/software (i.e. there several proxies implementations around)


>>
>>     In any case, if you're doing the work of signing, why not just
>>     encrypt?
>     because you can still use all the positive aspects of the proxy/cache
>
>
> You wouldn't be able to do that with a signed stream either without 
> allowing for proxies to do arbitrary transformations, at which point 
> we're back to where we are today in terms of reliability. These things 
> are 100% competitive with each other-- you can't both require signed 
> data and require not signed data!
>
I am not saying it is easy, but it is something we can explore as an 
alternative

I do think we should save and bring in 2.0 all the positive aspects of 
the proxy/cache

> I'd rather see explicitly configured proxies for this kind of thing-- 
> then the consumers are making the choice and can decide to not use it 
> if it doesn't provide a benefit (if the providers block encrypted 
> traffic then then only offer insecure traffic, which would not be 
> tolerated in most non-completely-backwards jurisdictions and entities).

I also think we should start to work on how explicitly configure a 
proxy, trusted proxy, and how to make possible to discover a proxy etc. etc.


/Salvatore
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> -=R
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>
>
>     /Salvatore
>
>
>>
>>     -=R
>