khafra comments on Procedural knowledge gap: public key encryption - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Solvent 12 January 2012 07:35AM

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Comment author: khafra 12 January 2012 09:39:23PM 1 point [-]

Also, encryption is easy; key management is hard. If your workplace sets up a Public Key Infrastructure on your Exchange server, all you have to do is click "encrypt." But outside of an organization that uses it, you'll need some out-of-band way of exchanging keys with everyone you want to communicate with. And, as fun as key-signing parties are, they can be a little awkward for, say, someone you just met on reddit.

Comment author: malthrin 12 January 2012 10:15:49PM 1 point [-]

Right. Encryption is a lever; it permits you to use the secrecy of a small piece of data (the key) to secure a larger piece of data (the message). The security isn't in the encryption math. It's in the key storage and exchange mechanism.

*I stole this analogy from something I read recently, probably on HN.