Which, of course, is why 'Virus' was such a crappy idea!
Which is why the TML of that time resounded with quite a few posts expressing outrage.
So much so, that LWiseman, who had made the initial disclosure, felt compelled to post his infamous, "Gentleman, we know what we're doing!" post.
As it turned out, that really only meant that GDW was too far gone to recognize that they had opted for suicide.
All the post-mortem excuses blaming anything & everything else notwithstanding, 'Virus' was a terrible, terrible decision.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Wednesday, April 3, 2019, 1:40:09 PM MST, James Catchpole (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:


Who said anything about a monoculture? I just said that I was thinking the starport authority would oversee installing a transponder they had certified. I'm assuming that an organisation with 1000 years of experience managing this, among other things would know better than to rely on one implementation, let alone the logistic problems trying to maintain one solution across 1000s of worlds would entail.

I'm also considering the single greatest weakness in any system like this - the storage of the private keys. These have to be on each ship somewhere, putting them at risk of theft. If any of the crew have access to them, then you might as well give them away. If they are stored in any way that can be easily copied or removed from the ship, then they *will* be, even if needs an offsite expert to extract the keys. All you can do is make it really difficult, so it's beyond most thieves.

You don't need a single catastrophic failure to bring down a system like this,
the theft of a small percentage of IDs so that there is doubt about any of them would be enough.

On Wed, 3 Apr 2019 17:19 Catherine Berry, <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
Exactly. :) And even without magic telekinetic AI lifeforms, a monoculture of proprietary transponders leaves you incredibly vulnerable. All it takes is for the bad guys to identify one exploit, and the entire Imperial traffic control (and IFF) system falls apart. Much better to publish the cryptographically-strong protocol, require all ships operating in the Imperium to respond to that protocol and the regulations surrounding it (e.g., submitting data for the shipping registry), and then let the free market take it from there.

On Wed, Apr 3, 2019 at 9:10 AM Bruce Johnson <xxxxxx@pharmacy.arizona.edu> wrote:


On Apr 2, 2019, at 5:27 PM, James Catchpole (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:

I see the transponder issue as being one of not guaranteeing security but making it *difficult* for wrongdoers - within the Imperium at least.

I was thinking that the transponder would be the key element, set up and sealed by the starport authority with a variety of anti-tamper mechanisms whose job is not to stop unauthorised access to the box, but to render it unusable if you do (including destroying the storage that contains the keys). That makes it *difficult* for anyone to get hold of any private keys - but not impossible (the corsair, for instance, is described as having a transponder that can be switched between several IDs). 



[Dons nomex underwear, fire suit, adjusts flame suppression systems to trigger properly]

Ahem; this exact kind of thing was what lead the Imperium to adopt Cymbelline origin silicon lifeforms as the basis of their  transponder systems. 

Which, of course, let Virus do it’s thing…..

-- 
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs


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