Re: Yes, they have found a serious PGP vulnerability...sort of

[Pavel Kankovsky <peak () ARGO TROJA MFF CUNI CZ>]

On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, Casper Dik wrote:

> How is any proposed defense going to work?  They're modifying your
> secret key stored on your system; if they can do that they can also
> remove any checks from your PGP program.

Yes and no.

Yes because in most cases, the ability to modify a file containing my
secret file implies the ability to control the behaviour of my instances
of PGP.

No because there are few but real different cases, such as my encrypted
secret key (and only the secret key) being transported from one secure
point to another secure point through a less secure environment. I
myself would expect the encryption is sufficient to protect both the
confidentiality and the integrity of my private key in such a situation.

Anyway, the most important reason to release a ``fix'' for the problem is
not to reduce actual risks (we see the reduction would be non-zero but
quite small) but to convince lusers they can trust PGP again. Most
people are pretty bad at risk assessment (car vs. plane accidents, coal
vs. nuclear power plants): they are in the ``that PGP thing is damn
insecure, I've heard that on TV'' state now (NAI should thank their lucky
star it all happened in a small country far away from the U.S.) but as
soon as the patch is made available (and announced in the media), the
lusers, or an important part of them, will go to the ``they've fixed it,
everything is ok, and the sun shines again'' state.

--Pavel Kankovsky aka Peak  [ Boycott Microsoft--http://www.vcnet.com/bms ]
"Resistance is futile. Open your source code and prepare for assimilation."