> I think this is being confounded by adjoining two conversations---that > smartcards provide additional security given a compromised system, and > the satirical quote your provided. I was referring in this case to the > latter.
If you send or receive sensitive communications from a compromised endpoint, you're screwed. The smartcard will not save you. It can't. When I hear people talk about how the smartcard will keep their keys safe even after a system compromise, I hear that as being like a survivalist talking about how great it is his tiny bomb shelter will keep his seeds safe after a direct hit from a nuclear bomb. Great, I'm very happy for you, but you're giving *terrible* advice to people who are worried about the bomb dropping. Even encouraging them to move somewhere that's not a high-priority target for a nuclear strike, as impractical as that advice is, is better. > My point is that if you base your entire threat model and practices on > the fact that some attacker somewhere is going to succeed in a targeted > attack against you, then you may as well give up on security period. If your threat model includes Tier-1 actors, you're gonna get Mossaded. You. Cannot. Win. Therefore, any threat model that assumes you're the target of Tier-1 interest is inherently -- I'll say it again -- screwed. Once you become a target of Tier-1 interest it's all over. Don't come to their attention. And don't mislead newbies by making them think they can win against Tier-1s, either. > You seem to be suggesting that key safety isn't even a concern if you're > compromised---that nothing else matters, and the distinction between a > compromise as you described with or without access to the key(s) is > irrelevant. You seem to think that your bomb shelter surrounded by five hundred meters of radioactive fused glass is somehow a win. After all, your keys are safe, right? Preserve the security of your endpoint system. Nothing else will do. _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
