On Thu, 22 Aug 2019 at 22:47, Kirk Wolf <k...@wolf-associates.com> wrote:
> BUT: if this vendor is giving you its server's private key, then the server > is *not* secure. This is because when you connect to that server you don't > know if you are really talking to the vendor or someone else, since anyone > with the private key could impersonate the server. You should never > trust exchanging information with this server. Friday true story... I had an isomorphic Real World incident back in 1980. Two friends had started a little company, and when I joined them we leased a small office in a mid-sized (10 storey) building that had typically three or four offices per floor, depending on the size. When we moved in the building manager gave us one door key for our little suite, and one building door key for after hours access, and we made a couple of copies of each. Some months later one evening we popped a circuit breaker, and I asked one of the office cleaners who was working on the floor to open the electrical room down the hall so I could reset it, rather than calling the official person and waiting forever. She said "your key will work - all keys are the same". Technopeasant, I said to myself, but indeed my *office* door key did work. We compared her key to mine, and they were identical. Slowly reality dawned... Is this the key you use to open the other offices, I asked? Yes, sure. So with her watching, I was able to open the office next door, and the next one too. They had given us the building master key, and presumably we weren't the only such "lucky" tenants! So of course we complained, but they seemed completely unable to appreciate the significance of what they had done. They offered to change *our* lock, but of course we pointed out that that wasn't the big problem: If *we* are known to have a master key, and *someone else* has a theft, *we* are going to be suspects, and rekeying all the locks in the building is the only solution. Well, we were the tiny startup, and they were the owners of an office building, and they refused to do anything. We wrote them a strongly worded letter disclaiming any responsibility for anything, they ignored it, and we all went on with work. But of course we did add a second lock of our own to address that half of the problem. It's hard to think of that happening in today's world where everyone has alarms and cameras and card access, and there seems to be a more general awareness of security. Or maybe not... Tony H. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
