5 ms·

We are considering as a next step having signed messages so you know at least two messages came from the same person. We want to maintain anonymity to protect

by matt2000 14y ago

We are considering as a next step having signed messages so you know at least two messages came from the same person. We want to maintain anonymity to protect posters, but it'd be interesting to know that posts were at least coming from the same person. I'm not sure this is what you're talking about though, sounds like you're more meaning person to person private messaging right?

jchrisa 14y ago
Great thought on signing before secrecy. Have you looked at the ietf JOSE project for signing json?
eschulte 14y ago
I think PGP signing could be a great way to prove authorship on publicly available messages (in those cases where rather than anonymity one does want to definitively know who wrote a message). EDIT: If you are not already familiar with it, take a look at the PGP web of trust idea to get a better feel for the "proven authorship" use case. Some linux distros use PGP keys to prove authorship of software. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust.
- matt2000 14y ago
  Thanks, looks interesting, I'll check that out.
jrochkind1 14y ago
This is neat. But. If this took off, and was actually being used by people... ...and the authorities, or any other attacker, wanted to disrupt the system -- they could just put all sorts of devices in the area distributing an incredibly high volume of spammy messages. As you circulated and downloaded messages from other nearby devices over bluetooth -- the legit messages from good actors would be overwhelmed by the spam messages, taking up all your storage space and making it hard to notice the legit messages. I was thinking about this, but then read this thread, and it occurs to me there may be some solution involving crypto, whitelisting certain signatures as 'known good actors', or even a web of trust thing. But yeah, that also could compromize the desired anonymity. And it's also probably true not to bother designing for a hypothetical problem/attack, the actual problem/attack will be subtly different. Still, I see a lot of these systems that are _really neat_ tricks, but seem to me like they would break down if they actually became popular, they work only as neat tricks. But yeah, I also really like the idea of private person-to-person (or person-to-known-group) encrypted messages -- they could even be distributed over participating third parties devices right? Author walks by person X, who's device picks it up but can't actually read it, and later hands it off to person Y, one of the intended recipients, who can read it. I'm not sure if that would end up actually being useful or not, but it would be NEAT.
- pents90 14y ago
  [I'm the co-creator of this project] I think that because this is a "human network", you wouldn't get those kinds of problems. People won't be synching with random strangers in the street, they will be synching with people they know and trust. Data will spread via "six degrees of separation". Think of it is just a more convenient form of USB thumb-drive sneakernets.

jchrisa 14y ago

Great thought on signing before secrecy. Have you looked at the ietf JOSE project for signing json?

eschulte 14y ago

I think PGP signing could be a great way to prove authorship on publicly available messages (in those cases where rather than anonymity one does want to definitively know who wrote a message). EDIT: If you are not already familiar with it, take a look at the PGP web of trust idea to get a better feel for the "proven authorship" use case. Some linux distros use PGP keys to prove authorship of software. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust.

matt2000 14y ago
Thanks, looks interesting, I'll check that out.

jrochkind1 14y ago

This is neat. But. If this took off, and was actually being used by people... ...and the authorities, or any other attacker, wanted to disrupt the system -- they could just put all sorts of devices in the area distributing an incredibly high volume of spammy messages. As you circulated and downloaded messages from other nearby devices over bluetooth -- the legit messages from good actors would be overwhelmed by the spam messages, taking up all your storage space and making it hard to notice the legit messages. I was thinking about this, but then read this thread, and it occurs to me there may be some solution involving crypto, whitelisting certain signatures as 'known good actors', or even a web of trust thing. But yeah, that also could compromize the desired anonymity. And it's also probably true not to bother designing for a hypothetical problem/attack, the actual problem/attack will be subtly different. Still, I see a lot of these systems that are _really neat_ tricks, but seem to me like they would break down if they actually became popular, they work only as neat tricks. But yeah, I also really like the idea of private person-to-person (or person-to-known-group) encrypted messages -- they could even be distributed over participating third parties devices right? Author walks by person X, who's device picks it up but can't actually read it, and later hands it off to person Y, one of the intended recipients, who can read it. I'm not sure if that would end up actually being useful or not, but it would be NEAT.

pents90 14y ago
[I'm the co-creator of this project] I think that because this is a "human network", you wouldn't get those kinds of problems. People won't be synching with random strangers in the street, they will be synching with people they know and trust. Data will spread via "six degrees of separation". Think of it is just a more convenient form of USB thumb-drive sneakernets.