Thanks!!! Love to hear about identity validation fighting malware of all kinds.
I’m not sure if it would actually be possible, but for many years I’ve been trying to promote a potential theory (below) to enhance and validate web traffic.
CONCEPT: If all IP traffic started with a PKE handshake, so that every web transaction was validated as to authenticity on both ends, most fraud would become much more difficult.
DETAIL: In case you are not familiar with this, this is how I think it would work. Every net connected device has a MAC address. That or a similar unique token would be associated with an embedded hardware (secret) key for encryption-decryption. This would be paired with a public encryption-decryption key for that device. All network traffic would be allowed iff (if and only if) the sending and receiving network devices could validate their partner devices identity.
So a pc requesting an email transaction would start with its own secret key and encrypt the network transaction header with it and with the public key of the device to which it wishes to communicate.
The receiving device would use its secret key and the senders public key to decrypt and thus validate the source device authenticity. A security checksum of the message would be included in the encrypted header so the message could be proved to be original an un-tampered.
I suggested this scheme 30 years ago to the network guru at the University of Rochester. He didn’t argue it was not feasible, but only that he did not believe it would be reasonably feasible to do it AND to get buy in from enough institutions to create the necessary gravity to gain the wide acceptance required for universal adoption.
You may see a fatal flaw, in which case let me know. If not, please suggest to whom I can present it with the hope that with creation, testing, and adoption, we can make the internet a safer place for all.
Many thanks for your time!
John “Ty” Dibble