On Wed, 10 Jul 2002, Jordyn A. Buchanan wrote:
On 7/10/02 3:01 PM, "Andy Dills" <andy@xecu.net> wrote:
Ah, and that's where the arrogance comment came from. You assume that the members of nanog care. I'm not trying to call you an arrogant person, and I recognize that you're not being blatantly arrogant, it's more of a passive assumption. The passive assumption is that your words are important enough that somebody might want to verify them. So, does EVERY email need to be pgp signed?
If you don't reliably sign your e-mails, it becomes very easy for someone to send a spoofed message without a signature and have people believe it is authentic. If you do reliably sign your e-mails, then others may realize that something is awry when an unsigned message is sent out. Even if the signatures are rarely checked, consistency of signing is a useful function by creating an expectation of trusted communications.
Uhm, one HUGE problem with that. If people judge authenticity based on the simple fact that a message is signed, that's just as useless. Why wouldn't the spoofed email be signed with somebody else's key, to make it past all those people who merely check to see if it's signed? The _only_ way to verify authenticity is to check the signature. By signing every single email sent, you endanger yourself by allowing your recipients to judge the authenticity of your emails simply by the existence of a pgp signature. Therefore, you should only sign emails that contain information important enough that verification is necessary, otherwise nobody will check. Andy xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Andy Dills 301-682-9972 Xecunet, LLC www.xecu.net xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Dialup * Webhosting * E-Commerce * High-Speed Access