[OLPC Security] Seamless Lessons & Security (commentary)

[Bert Freudenberg]

Am 08.07.2008 um 11:57 schrieb Toby Murray:

> On Tue, 2008-07-08 at 11:47 +0200, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>> Am 08.07.2008 um 09:11 schrieb Toby Murray:
>>
>>> On Tue, 2008-07-08 at 00:27 +0200, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>>>> Am 07.07.2008 um 23:31 schrieb Martin Dengler:
>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 05:03:58PM -0400, Ivan Krsti�? wrote:
>>>>>> On Jul 7, 2008, at 4:50 PM, Hal Murray wrote:
>>>>>>> Is that good enough?  I think it would work fine for paranoid
>>>>>>> security geeks,
>>>>>>> but what about school children?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It's good enough because the purpose of the dialog is not to
>>>>>> protect,
>>>>>> but to inform.
>>>>>
>>>>> I respectfully disagree that the dialog/notification can achieve
>>>>> that
>>>>> goal.
>>>>
>>>> The goal is to prevent an activity from automatically launching
>>>> another activity without user interaction. A system-provided dialog
>>>> or
>>>> menu does that just fine.
>>>
>>> Isn't that like saying that the goal of airport security is to  
>>> ensure
>>> that noone can board without showing ID.
>>>
>>> No it's not. The goal of airport security is to ensure that noone  
>>> can
>>> board who is deemed unsafe to allow to fly.
>>
>> Right. But Bitfrost is not about airport security.
>
> No but airport security demonstrates that intelligent people can fall
> victim to thinking they're providing security when what they're really
> providing is security theatre.
>
> The dialog/notification that Ivan cited above is an example of  
> security
> theatre.


I don't think this discussion is fruitful without looking at the  
actual threat model.

The threat that was discussed is that a malicious activity could  
launch other activities on its own, resulting in DOS. The dialog (or  
any required user interaction) to me seems adequate to prevent this  
attack. Do you disagree?

If you see other threats in this scenario that are not otherwise  
addressed by Bitfrost then please be specific about them, and we'll  
have a separate discussion.

- Bert -