idealised properties?

graydon@pobox.com graydon@pobox.com
Wed, 21 Feb 2001 23:49:09 -0500


the discussions I've seen focus on 3 categories of threat model:

* incompetence, misconfiguration, congestion, accidental deletion, 
  disconnection

* un-coordinated attack by disagreeable people: script kiddies,
  lawyers with small-ish clients, ex-roommates

* systemic attack by global organizations with arbitrary resources.

the third is appealing to many crypto people (me too) because it's so
cloak-and-dagger, but it's hard to deal with because they can resort to
law-making, treaties, rubber hoses, etc. the first and second are imho
hard enough to deal with and can probably offer enough utility to be
worthwhile.  

-graydon