From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 07:28:17 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Anonymous Message Broadcast
Message-ID: <199608042120.OAA12926@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 12:58 PM 8/3/96 -0400, Laszlo Vecsey <master@internexus.net> wrote:
>Has anyone implemented a simple anonymous chat system (an anonymous irc)
>using the technique described in Applied Cryptography 2nd edition? I'm
>speaking of the Anonymous Message Broadcast documented in section 6.3, it
>begins on page 137.

A lot of people talk about Dining Cryptographers networks, but I'm not
aware of more than an occasional test implementation - the concept is
simple, but getting all the details right is a lot of work,
including things like collision detection, and there aren't a lot of
good uses for the things to motivate development, even though they
are basically cool.  

One design approach is to use IRC; another is email.
IRC probably requires that all the participants be on simultaneously,
or requires a coordination system to handle whoever's on right now.


>Can the same system be implemented using base256 (unsigned char, 8bit ASCII)
>instead of the simple on/off binary method that is described in the
>explanation? How would it differ.

Rather than doing Base256, just XOR the bytes; you get the speed of
doing things a byte or word at a time, while still getting bitwise changes.
#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> 	Defuse Authority!