<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Aug 10, 2015, at 2:00 PM, Philipp Winter <<a href="mailto:phw@nymity.ch" class="">phw@nymity.ch</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; display: inline !important;" class="">Vanity addresses encourage people to only verify the human-readable part</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; display: inline !important;" class="">of an address before clicking on it. That creates a false sense of</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; display: inline !important;" class="">security, which is already exploited by spoofed onion service addresses</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; display: inline !important;" class="">whose prefix and suffix mimics the original onion address.</span><br class=""></div></blockquote><br class=""></div><div>That does strike me as a risk. </div><div><br class=""></div><div>That said, if an address is completely incapable, even hostile to validation by human eyeballs, then what happens is “trust” migrates to using a bunch of tools which are forgeable, spoofable, hackable, trojanable.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>The resultant risk might be worse for its greater resistance to detection.</div><div><br class=""></div><div> -a</div><div><br class=""></div><div>ps: for an investigation of what happens when you build a “communities” app around “non-human-readable” barcodes and without a discovery mechanism, see this article; such innovation gives me great hope for humanity finding solutions to apparently high-friction technologies, but it also clearly hampers broader inclusiveness, the latter arguably being one of Tor’s most important goals:</div><div><br class=""></div><div><a href="http://mashable.com/2014/10/24/hacks-facebook-rooms/" class="">http://mashable.com/2014/10/24/hacks-facebook-rooms/</a></div><div><br class=""></div><div><div class=""><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">—</div><div class="">Alec Muffett</div><div class="">Security Infrastructure</div><div class="">Facebook Engineering</div><div class="">London</div><div class=""><br class=""></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>