private key protection

[Jerome Baum]

> Well, not quite.  Eventually you would get it.  The task of security
> systems is to make "eventually" be longer than:
> 
> o  the payoff is worth; or
> o  the time it takes to be discovered; or
> o  the time it takes for the secured object to lose its value.
> 
> Statistically, that is.  You could get it right on the first try, but
> you very probably won't.  You are guaranteed to get it right if you
> try every possible value.

Right, that's a good point I think we all considered "trivial" when
maybe we shouldn't have. In your threat model you should determine for
how long your data should be safe (per attacker type) before you go
ahead and make decisions about key protection.

While we're discussing the STEED proposal in the other thread, do you
think it's better to educate your users and risk loosing them or do you
think it's better to provide "sensible" defaults for the "average"
threat model and assume they'll learn everything else over time and
start tweaking?

I suppose the latter model fits the "power user" case well, where they
start using the tool and eventually learn about other features and start
tweaking.

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