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1997-10-10 - Re: computationally infeasible jobs for MITMs (Re: Secure phone)

Header Data

From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
To: Adam Back <jad@dsddhc.com
Message Hash: d19bf550e264464ab59ffdfd41e7f5d75ada464712a2ff4fe917320224f02863
Message ID: <3.0.3.32.19971009111805.006aedf0@popd.ix.netcom.com>
Reply To: <3.0.3.32.19971008132417.00b0c6d0@labg30>
UTC Datetime: 1997-10-10 07:14:29 UTC
Raw Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 15:14:29 +0800

Raw message

From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 15:14:29 +0800
To: Adam Back <jad@dsddhc.com
Subject: Re: computationally infeasible jobs for MITMs (Re: Secure phone)
In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19971008132417.00b0c6d0@labg30>
Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.19971009111805.006aedf0@popd.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



>> It would be easy enough to "trick" the MITM into exposing their
>> existance anyway, just by using digits that come up in conversation.
>> Humans would be able to come up with unique situations that the MITM
>> would find all but impossible to predict.  "Hey, Eric, I noticed
>> that the third digit of your IP address' second octet is the same as
>> the second digit of our exchange.  How's by you?"  A sudden dropout

Another game you can play, with the audio, is to have music playing in
the background, so Eve not only has to fake Alice's voice, but has to
fake Alice reading numbers against a background of an arbitrarily-selected
musical piece.

Now, the effectiveness of the technique may depend on the musical
tastes of the players ("Hey - that's not Toscanini conducting
Beethoven's Fifth - that's the Furtwangler version on Deutsche Gramophon!"/
"Oh, was that Elvis?  I guess so."/ "We're being MITMed - the Terrapin Station 
during the numbers was off the album, where Jerry remembered all the words, 
and now you're playing an audience tape version from Nassau in 89" )
and with some genres of music, it makes it easier to notice if 
there's a gap.
				Thanks!
					Bill
Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com
Regular Key PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639

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