[e-lang] A broken brand?

[David Wagner]

Toby Murray writes:
>Could you expand on "like a brand ought to". Better yet, can we agree on
>a (formal) definition of the intended behaviour of a brand? 
[...]
>I am uncomfortable, however, that the definition of "correct behaviour"
>here seems rather fuzzy.

Nope.  I can't give you a careful, complete specification of the desired
behavior of a brand.  But I would say that the behavior exposed in my
attack seems unexpected and undesirable.  My intuition is that you should
only be able to get at the contents of a sealed box if you have both the
box and the unsealer, and my attack violates that intuition.  Can I make
this intuition precise?  Can I provide a full specification of a brand?
Nope.  The intuition is indeed fuzzy.  But (in my opinion) I think this
intuition is enough to conclude that my attack is a successful violation
of the security goals of a brand, even if I can't specify all of those
security goals carefully and even if I cannot fully specify the desired
behavior for a brand.  Such a spec sure would be nice to have, though.