Before Recitation
Read "Keys Under Doormats: Mandating Insecurity by Requiring Government Access to all Data and Communications" by Abelson et al. This paper is different from many of the papers that we've read in 6.1800 in that it's largegly about policy, not specific technical content.
If we're using public keys for encryption, we use different public/secret key pairs than we use for signing, and it works as follows: if Alice wants to send a message to Bob, she encrypts the message with Bob's public key, and Bob will be able to decrypt with his secret key. Notice, then, that anyone can encrypt a message to Bob, because everyone knows his public key. But only Bob can reverse the operation (by decrypting). This is the same way you saw public-key cryptography used in Lecture 24, as part of Tor.
Question for Recitation: Before you come to this recitation, you'll turn in a brief answer to the following questions (really—we don't need more than a sentence or so for each question). Your TA will be in touch about exactly how to turn that in.
Your answers to these questions should be in your own words, not direct quotations from the paper.
- The paper states that "complexity is the enemy of security." What examples have you seen that illustrate this ideas? They could be examples from lecture, recitation, or even your life outside of 6.1800.
- Suppose our systems did grant exceptional access to law enforcement agencies. Who would be impacted by this? In what ways would they be impacted? You should be able to give far more than one example.
During Recitation
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