ISSUE-38
no safe haven in presentation space (from public comments)
- State:
- CLOSED
- Product:
- wsc-usecases
- Raised by:
- Bill Doyle
- Opened on:
- 2007-04-15
- Description:
- From public comments
 raised by: Al Gilman Alfred.S.Gilman@ieee.org
 
 http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-usable-
 authentication/2007Apr/0000.html
 
 no safe haven in presentation space
 where it says, in 2.5 Reliable presentation of security information
 The Working Group will recommend presentation techniques that
 mitigate deceptive imitation, or hiding, of the user agent\'s
 presentation of security information.
 where it says, in 2.7 Best practices for other media
 The Working Group will provide best practice guidelines for
 other media to follow so as not to undermine the presentation of
 security information on the web.
 please consider
 This part of the strategy seems particularly weak. Techniques to ascertain
 the actual presentation of [e.g. DOM objects] is sought by the WAI.
 Techniques to query the delivery context are under development by the Device
 Independence [now Ubiquitous Web Applications] Working Group. You should
 think of querying the delivery context for evidence of spoofing \'security
 indicating\' presentation as one of the tools in your deployment strategy.
 Likewise, making it easy for the user to exercise a faint twitch of skepticism
 with what seems to them a lightweight gesture, but raises the sensitivity of
 security-information-filtering -- that is a closed-loop, mixed-initiative way
 to move the performance curve of security failures vs. user nuisance. Also,
 you should consider introducing practices which are not widely used now but
 are up and running and working in practice. What if the user gets a page with
 some protected content and some that was transmitted in unprotected HTTP. The
 user doesn\'t know what in the page is of what category. Suppose at this point
 they could by a flick of the hotkey send the challenge \"can you send me that
 offer in a signed document?\" This relies on PKI that is somewhere in the SSL
 stack, and the server won\'t have to bear the burden all the time. When a user
 is at all concerned, the ethical merchant could want to invest the extra
 cycles for the cryptography. In other words, readily achievable changes in
 technology deployment should not be altogether off the table.
 Why?
 It seems unlikely that you can limit yourselves to currently-widely adopted
 technology and not find that any presentation-property syndrome that you
 select (whether of placement, coloration or language) is vulnerable to highly
 effective spoofing attacks. Likewise the appeal to other media to stay out of
 your protected zone is not likely to be successful unless a duly constituted
 panel representing all stakeholders decides the allocated reserved
 presentations.
 
 
 
- Related Actions Items:
- No related actions
- Related emails:
- RE: ISSUE-38: no safe haven in presentation space (from publiccomments) (from tyler.close@hp.com on 2007-08-08)
- RE: ISSUE-38: no safe haven in presentation space (from publiccomments) (from wdoyle@mitre.org on 2007-07-30)
- Meeting record: WSC WG weekly 2007-07-18 (from tlr@w3.org on 2007-07-26)
- Re: Agenda: WSC WG distributed meeting, Wednesday, 2007-07-25 (from tlr@w3.org on 2007-07-24)
- Re: ISSUE-38: no safe haven in presentation space (from public comments) (from tlr@w3.org on 2007-07-19)
- Draft Minutes for Jul 18 Meeting (from johnath@mozilla.com on 2007-07-18)
- Agenda: WSC WG distributed meeting 2007-07-18 (from tlr@w3.org on 2007-07-17)
- Re: Agenda: WSC WG distributed meeting 2007-07-18 (from tlr@w3.org on 2007-07-17)
- Re: ISSUE-38: no safe haven in presentation space (from public comments) (from tlr@w3.org on 2007-07-11)
- RE: ISSUE-38: no safe haven in presentation space (from public comments) (from Mary_Ellen_Zurko@notesdev.ibm.com on 2007-06-15)
- RE: ISSUE-38: no safe haven in presentation space (from public comments) (from Mary_Ellen_Zurko@notesdev.ibm.com on 2007-05-23)
- RE: ISSUE-38: no safe haven in presentation space (from public comments) (from wdoyle@mitre.org on 2007-05-22)
- RE: ISSUE-38: no safe haven in presentation space (from public comments) (from tyler.close@hp.com on 2007-05-21)
- ISSUE-38: no safe haven in presentation space (from public comments) (from Mary_Ellen_Zurko@notesdev.ibm.com on 2007-05-10)
- Re: ISSUE-38: no safe haven in presentation space (from public comments) (from Mary_Ellen_Zurko@notesdev.ibm.com on 2007-04-18)
- ISSUE-38: no safe haven in presentation space (from public comments) (from dean+cgi@w3.org on 2007-04-15)
 
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