Re: [GNU/consensus] [SocialSwarm-D] Zooko's Triangle

[Guido Witmond]

On 25-07-13 10:02, carlo von lynX wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 12:40:24AM -0700, elijah wrote:
>> We still live under Zooko's triangle. Identity <> key mapping is only
>> easy if you exclusively care about globally unique and decentralized,
>> but it is very hard if you care also about human friendly.
> 
> hi there eli.. well if saying 7yuogiqxgrak36kk is all it takes to
> achieve Identity <> key mapping and as hard as human unfriendly gets,
> I am positive people out there are going to deal with human unfriendly
> for the sake of a truly reliable communications infrastructure.

I think that's too optimistic. People choose easy over secure anytime.
Even if it threatens their lives.

I would state the claim that one can't have reliable communication
without having all three of Zooko's properties. Proof is left as an
exercise for the reader.

> 
>> You can get all three, if you cheat. Namecoin is an example of cheating
>> in a peer to peer way (the cheat is that the global append-only log is
>> essentially an authority, derived from consensus of miners). DANE
>> achieves all three by relying on the authority of the root DNS zone.
>> Nicknym, the protocol we are working on (https://leap.se/en/nicknym)
>> also achieves all three by relying on DNS, although in an entirely
>> different way.
> 
> So in my case the cheat is in selecting a slice of the hash?
> 
>> We can, and must, do much better than a secure identity system that is
>> unfriendly to humans. It is the 21st century, after all.
> 
> The other two goals are a lot more important, so all we want to do
> is mitigate this aspect. I see 3 fabulous ways to do it:
> 
> - socialist millionaire's shared secret while having a beer together
> - public key in a QR code on a business card (printed paper is harder to mitm)
> - a slice of the hash confirmed by voice on the phone


1. Having a beer together is fun but doesn't scale over distance. How do
I set up a secure channel with people 50 km away? There is no such thing
as virtual beer.

2. Public key fingerprint or QR codes are not Zooko-proof. It's fails
the human memorize-able property. I can't read it from the side of a bus
and type it in at home.

3. A slice of a hash only proofs that you have a secure channel when you
know the identity of the other person.

> 
> Tor is leading the way. Simply by spelling out 7yuogiqxgrak36kk to you
> we have a cryptographic guarantee that your tor node will connect to mine
> and only to mine. NSA can do a lot, but I doubt they can MITM all mails
> and twitters on earth to intercept my hash and replace it with another,
> but just in case they'd dare to do so for you because you are their target,
> well then you can have a surveilled phone conversation with me and I can
> *still* make sure you have my correct public key - no matter how many
> people are listening into that conversation.
> 
> Many of the MITM problems arise from the abstraction of identity and her
> public key. By actually using the key in addressing we solve the problems.
> There is no need to maintain abstraction layers that reduce the
> security of its users.
> 
> So I'd say Zooko is a problem solved.
> Back to work, we've got to save the world.

Not so fast, mister 7yuoqigxqrak36kk,

You leave out one property of Zooko's triangle and declare it solved.

Feel free to check out my attempt at solving Zooko's triangle. It uses
DNSSEC/DANE to validate the domain and it uses a network perspective to
validate each CA at the domain. Users are anonymous.

Check out:
http://eccentric-authentication.org/eccentric-authentication/five-minute-overview.html



>> And yes, I proudly belong to the church of identity in the form of the
>> URI commonly referred to as an email address. Not only is address@hidden
>> fantastically usable, it is also universally understood by every
>> internet user on earth. There are other addressing schemes that are user
>> friendly-ish, like twitter @user, or namecoin (although namecoin
>> obviously has other problems), but address@hidden is here to stay.
> 
> Neither Skype nor Facebook think in terms of address@hidden Actually @domain
> is totally distant from average humanity - it's abnormal to think of yourself
> in terms of affiliation. No surprise the #1 domain in the world is gmail.com.
> People would deal with it, if it worked, but it doesn't. Now it's time to
> provide the key instead of the domain. You're living in the past, Eli.  :)
> 

I fully agree with Eli here, Carlo. Or should I say address@hidden

'Von' as used in your name means, 'From the family' or 'From the town'.


Regards, Guido.