From: Matthew J Ghio <mg5n+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: Tue, 26 Apr 94 19:15:44 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Reply to long post by TCMay
In-Reply-To: <199404241946.MAA05741@mail.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <QhjQd4200WAy8Cw1QW@andrew.cmu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> II. What's Neeeded
>
> * Consider some things we like to talk about:
> 
> - alternatives to RSA (elliptic functions, etc.)

This isn't a technical problem, but I think having some RSA alternatives
would put us in a better position politically.  What sort of systems are
availiable?  (For my own personal inquisitiveness, I have developed some
ideas for systems that might work, but I really can't be sure of their
effectiveness/security.)

> - secret-sharing protocols

You mean like DH?  Alternatives to DH?

> - remailer-specific code (adding latency, mixing, padding, etc.)

Well, Karl Barrus has done a lot of work here, but let me restate my
call for more remailers - BTW: Why don't you set up a remailer on your
Netcom account, since you seem to like them so much?

> - dining cryptographers nets (DC-Nets, a la Chaum, Bos, etc.)

We could do this...  You want to build a DC-Net for the remailers or something?

> - digital cash (a vast area of diverse protocols for clearing
> transactions, for blinding, for detecting double-spending, etc.)

Yep, the old digicash problem...

> - random number generators (Schneier, for example, supplies
> code fragments for the Blum-Blum-Shub generator...need I
> again say that probably few of us know how to "call" this code
> easily?)

We have lots of RNGs...What do you want to DO with them?

> - code for message pools, for chaining remailers, etc.....a lot of
> this exists as scraps of Perl in various places.

Well, we have message pools, but perhaps software to automatically scan
them and pick out messages for you would be helpful...


Your point about the Crypto Toolkit is well-taken, especially in light
of your comment about Mathematica.  We need some sort of universal
interface that everyone can use, that is easy to understand, and have it
be able to work with different mail packages and different systems. 
Maybe we need some kind of new interpreted (for universal portability)
data-manipulations language, so we can write crypto tools and everyone
could use them on every platform.  Or maybe we just need to write a
cypherpunks mail program, that could automatically handle PGP, anonymous
remailer chainings, and remailer reply protocols.  I know Ian Smith was
working on something like this...

One other potential project - on-the-fly file encryption/decryption for
multi-user unix systems would be a big plus for security (like secure
drive but not for the whole disk).  If a hacker got into you account,
all they'd have is a bunch of encrypted files.  We could set it up to
work with existing accounts so that after you enter your account, you
have to enter a second password to get to your files, preferably by
secure key-exchange protocols.  It's a shame I don't know enuf about
unix to hack it myself. :(