Glossary
Pairing Ceremony
A pairing ceremony is the process by which two devices establish an initial shared trust — entering a PIN shown on one device into the other, confirming a matching code, tapping one device against another — before any of the actual data they'll later exchange can be trusted. This moment matters disproportionately to how brief and unremarkable it usually looks: everything the devices communicate afterward relies on the trust this initial exchange established, so a weak or bypassable ceremony undermines every later exchange, no matter how well-secured those later exchanges are on their own.
A ceremony that's too easy to complete without genuine physical proximity or explicit human confirmation — pairing that happens automatically, with no visible confirmation step at all — makes it correspondingly easy for a device that was never supposed to be trusted to slip into that same trusted role instead, simply by being nearby at the right moment.