Comment by lawrenceyan
3 years ago
Ok that's actually a great point. To make the comparison:
Tire-irons require physical proximity. And torture generally doesn't work, at least in the case of getting a private key.
Reading/writing to the brain, on the other hand, requires no physical proximity if wireless. And the person(s) won't even know it's happening.
These seem like totally different paradigms to me.
I think we are a long way away from being able to wirelessly read a few specific bytes of data from the brain of an unknowing person. Far enough away that I'm not sure it's productive to begin thinking of how to design encryption systems around it.
Memory and experience aren't encoded in the brain like traditional computers. There's no concept of a "byte" when thinking about the human computational model.
There is the concept of "byte" when talking about a string of characters which make up a password, though, which is why I said bytes. But yes, I am aware, and your statement just further supports my point.
3 replies →
> And torture generally doesn't work, at least in the case of getting a private key.
This seems incorrect.
> torture generally doesn't work, at least in the case of getting a private key.
Why not?
You can beat me to a pulp, doesn't make me suddenly remember a specific N byte string any faster.
Passwords are to be remembered, private keys are to be stored. I suppose I'll tell you where it's stored, but often even that doesn't help. (E.g. It's on a USB key I didn't label and lost, or this is totally the admin pin to my smartcard, ok you got me these 3 are the real pins, uh oh it's physically wiped itself? Sad face for you)