[6871] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: secret-sharing code
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Stewart)
Fri Mar 31 00:38:31 2000
Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.20000330164607.008eae80@idiom.com>
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 16:46:07 -0800
To: "Matt Crawford" <crawdad@fnal.gov>, John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>
From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>
Cc: cryptography@c2.net
In-Reply-To: <200003301431.IAA03911@gungnir.fnal.gov>
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At 08:31 AM 03/30/2000 -0600, Matt Crawford replied to John Gilmore:
>> Keep the meta-root private key under very very high security (my
>> recommendation was to embed it in the structural members of a
>> skyscraper, such that anyone who tried to get it -- the legitimate
>> owner or anyone else -- would have to make a lot of noise for an
>> extended period, in a very public place).
>
>You need to see more stage magic. The theft or copying would be done
>before the steel was welded. To be fair, this bald assertion is
>applicable to many schemes in which the complete secret exists
>somewhere before it is divided or hidden.
My first reaction to Dorothy Denning's description of the
Clipper Key Escrow Charade In The NSA Vault was that
"Penn&Teller could find a dozen ways to steal the keys in that process" :-)
(About the same time, Penn wrote a scathing criticism of Clipper
in his computer-magazine column, but he took the moral high road
that escrow is none of their business rather than the "I could steal *that*"
approach :-)
Thanks!
Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
