[tor-talk] Tor for everyone; introducing Eccentric Authentication

[Paul Syverson]

On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 12:26:02AM +0100, Guido Witmond wrote:
> 
> I don't want *people* to exchange keys. I envision people to exchange
> names and let computers do the key lookup.
> 

The description below sounds a fair amount like Keybase (https://keybase.io)
Perhaps it would be helpful to contrast your goals with theirs?

aloha,
Paul

> For example, I get the id at site name from a nice lady I met at a bar.
> It's just like an email address but slightly different.
> 
> At home, I type in that address and my computer searches the validation
> service for the key. If all is well, there is *one* public key. That
> must be the key of the lady. If there is none, she may have given me a
> wrong address, or I may have made a typo. In these cases, it's like she
> gave a wrong telephone number.
> 
> If there is one public key, it must be hers as her computer checks for
> duplicates to protect her privacy. Or it's the name of some stranger,
> and after an embarrassing moment, I understand I can't reach her until
> we meet again in person.
> 
> If there are duplicates, she must find another site as it violated the
> protocol. She would do so as she won't get any responses from the people
> whom she gave her correct address. Those people would reject the
> duplicates and move on. (That's the protocol requirement.)
> 
> If she gave the correct id at site and there is only one public key, I can
> send her encrypted messages that only she can decrypt. Now we can talk
> in private. And when we use Tor, we hardly leave any meta data.
> 
> So the exchange of a human readable name - the id at site - implies that I
> can deduce the correct public key. The one-to-one relationship between
> names and keys makes it easy for humans to excahnge a name and for the
> computer to figure out the correct public key.
> 
> 
> So, to answer your question: people communicate id at site names, the
> computer verifies the uniqness properties to determine the corresponding
> public keys. The requirement to make the relation between names and
> public keys is key. Pun intended.
> 
> I hope this answers your question.
> 
> Regards, Guido Witmond.
> 



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