Thread

1. bzmrgonz · 1789618128 · focus · HN ↗

   It baffles that people think it's a bad thing to disclose a public key. That's their purpose actually. Sure we now have the post quantum computer threat, and some state actors are harvesting keys, but quantum computer is going to disrupt so much, that Id verification won't even matter really.

   1. morsch · 1789623646 · focus · HN ↗

      Think about it, the key analogy is just terrible. In the origin domain, losing a key is always bad, and making a key available to all is a non sequitur.

      It's not like non-technical people understand asymmetric cryptography. Or even technical people, for that matter.

      Maybe we should refer to the public key as an address, and the private key is just a password again. You can send stuff, securely, to an address. And you can verify the sender when you have their address (ie check the signature).

      1. fragmede · 1789624854 · focus · HN ↗

         Or how about we call it the lock. There's the (private) key, and it fits the lock (public key). You can pass the lock around, but you need the (private) key to be useful.

         1. danw1979 · 1789627888 · focus · HN ↗

            I dunno if that works or is any less confusing, to be honest.

            I don’t think there’s any process or entity in the physical world that is reasonably familiar to most people that is even remotely suitable as an analogy to public key cryptography.

            1. tialaramex · 1789637052 · focus · HN ↗

               I think this is worth highlighting. Public Key Cryptography is a surprising idea. Like Computation, if you'd told a 19th century mathematician about this, they might buy it as a concept but deem it unlikely to ever happen in practice or be of any significance, in the 20th century these were both realised and caused a massive change to our society.

               These are not analogs to things ordinary people had already seen. For Computation we just got used to it being everywhere and so we don't need to explain it so much.

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