Re: ECC vs RSA, and Similar Conflicts

On May 10, 2012, at 10:44 AM, Eric Rescorla wrote:

> On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 7:30 AM, David Dahl <ddahl@mozilla.com> wrote:
>> One of the reasons for establishing this WG is to try and provide a more secure way of using crypto on the web. Keeping the private keys private is at the top of this list. We can establish a spec that only ever references private key IDs, making this much more secure than existing JS crypto libraries that have access to private key material.
> 
> It's not clear to me that this is "much more secure". What's the
> threat model under which
> that is the case?

Same as the threat model under which HSMs are more secure than software crypto modules.  If the API ensures application-layer code can't see the keys, it's one less thing to validate / worry about.

--Richard

Received on Thursday, 10 May 2012 14:58:11 UTC