The trust can be considered bootstrapped by visual verification of the address prefix. If we are really concerned about someone jamming a Bluetooth signal in a coffeeshop then the UI can encourage verification of the prefix. Much like how regular Bluetooth requires 'pairing' via entering a 4-6 digit code.


logo   
Paul Puey CEO / Co-Founder, Airbitz Inc
     



On Feb 5, 2015, at 3:46 PM, Eric Voskuil <eric@voskuil.org> wrote:

On 02/05/2015 03:36 PM, MⒶrtin HⒶboⓋštiak wrote:
A BIP-70 signed payment request in the initial broadcast can resolve the
integrity issues, but because of the public nature of the broadcast
coupled with strong public identity, the privacy compromise is much
worse. Now transactions are cryptographically tainted.

This is also the problem with BIP-70 over the web. TLS and other
security precautions aside, an interloper on the communication, desktop,
datacenter, etc., can capture payment requests and strongly correlate
transactions to identities in an automated manner. The payment request
must be kept private between the parties, and that's hard to do.

What about using encryption with forward secrecy? Merchant would
generate signed request containing public ECDH part, buyer would send
back transaction encrypted with ECDH and his public ECDH part. If
receiving address/amount is meant to be private, use commit protocol
(see ZRTP/RedPhone) and short authentication phrase (which is hard to
spoof thanks to commit protocol - see RedPhone)?

Hi Martin,

The problem is that you need to verify the ownership of the public key.
A MITM can substitute the key. If you don't have verifiable identity
associated with the public key (PKI/WoT), you need a shared secret (such
as a secret phrase). But the problem is then establishing that secret
over a public channel.

You can bootstrap a private session over the untrusted network using a
trusted public key (PKI/WoT). But the presumption is that you are
already doing this over the web (using TLS). That process is subject to
attack at the CA. WoT is not subject to a CA attack, because it's
decentralized. But it's also not sufficiently deployed for some scenarios.

e