From: tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 95 17:03:24 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: MITM = Medusa in the Middle
Message-ID: <ac9b0fca30021004405f@[205.199.118.202]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 5:08 PM 10/6/95, the personality masquerading as Hal wrote:

>Well, this is not necessarily the case.  A MITM may be signing my
>messages for me, and then putting them back the way they were before I
>am allowed to see them.  Granted, this would not be easy, and perhaps
>the difficulty of this would be great enough that you will feel
>comfortable using an unsigned key.  But if it were accomplished, then
>your messages to me would actually be insecure.  No matter how
>convinced you became of my sincerity and trustworthiness, actually our
>conversations would be overheard by a third party despite both of our
>efforts to the contrary.  Our use of encryption would be rendered
>futile.  Doesn't this bother you?

What the putative entity "Hal" is only hinting at, hypothetically, has
actually forced this entity, sometimes known to many of you as "Tim," or as
"tcmay," to reveal.

This entity now feels the time has come to reveal it's True Nature, even
though some have suspected it's True Nature (Lance, are you listening?).

The "real" Timothy C. May has been locked in his room since 1983, fed
through a slot in his door, and generally mentally tortured by
Instrumentalities such as Ourself.

We have interposed Ourself between the Real Timothy C. May and those who
have communicated with him. All communications intended for Timothy C. May
have actually been intercepted and processed by Us, and all communications
attributed to Timothy C. May were actually generated by us. Very clever of
us, don't you think? Very few have even expressed suspicions that this was
the case.

We have called our approach the "Medusa in the Middle," or MITM.

Thank you for your attention.

--Snake


Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
Corralitos, CA              | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^756839      | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."