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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Sat Apr 10 1999 - 01:10:58
Berke Durak (berke@gsu.linux.org.tr)
Tue, 18 Aug 1998 22:28:02 +0300 (EEST)
On Tue, 18 Aug 1998, Bruce Schneier wrote:
> Which brings up an interesting question.... With all this willingness to
> volunteer, is there a crypto coding project that would benefit mankind
> that we should embark on?
I was dreaming for about two years of a distributed/serverless, encrypted
(and possibly anonymous) multi-user Internet chat protocol, that would replace
IRC, and which would not require centralized servers to operate (which
impose control on users). I'm sure many people are thinking of such a thing.
It could be built over UDP, since TCP is painfully slow over long-distance
links with important packet loss. Users participating in a chat room would
relay packets between themselves, possibly anonymising and/or adding cover
traffic, and possibly optimizing throughput, by adapting themselves to the
physical configuration of the network. Therefore it would not be possible to
shutdown discussion, except by blocking packets at routers, which could be
defeated anyway if some day people start to make independent network links
between themselves with spread spectrum packet radio; and it would not
provide a centralized point for collecting traffic, as with current IRC
servers.
Small "rendez-vous" servers could be used for helping users locating
themselves, coordinating channel information etc.
And some kind of "anonymous identification protocol" that would allow users
knowing each other to mutually identify themselves, without revealing any
information on their identities if they don't, while allowing individuals to
remain "unknown" for people they know but do not wish to discuss with that
day would be very useful.
This is the single cryptographic project that would most benefit mankind, I
guess.
It would enable free, anonymous real-time "speech" on the net. Real-time
speech being much more "dangerous" than mailing lists or newsgroups,
widespread use of this "cooperative chat protocol" could however speedup the
process of outlawing cryptography.
It requires considerable expertise in network protocol design, including
packet routing, conventional cryptography implementation and (for the
"anonymous identification part") a suitable protocol. Moreover, it
absolutely _requires_ a colored, simple and attractive graphical interface
that would run on mainstream platform (I'll give no names) because we want
PEOPLE to use cryptography, not just "techies".
Maybe this has been discussed long before, but currently I have difficulties
finding even a simple person-to-person encrypted chat program that uses
public key crypto (the only one I have encountered was a modified version
of UNIX talk using D-H).
Does someone knows of such a project ? Have these ideas been previously
discussed, and up to which point ?
I guess many people would volunteer, but we need a crypto expert to
coordinate the project: I guess Bruce has some spare time to fill since he
was asking for it...
Berke Durak - berke@gsu.linux.org.tr - http://gsu.linux.org.tr/kripto-tr/
PGP bits/keyID: 2047/F203A409 fingerprint: 44780515D0DC5FF1:BBE6C2EE0D1F56A1
The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Sat Apr 10 1999 - 01:10:58