[12546] in Cypherpunks
Re: Milgram & Authority
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ed Carp)
Wed Apr 27 09:49:15 1994
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 1994 06:47:48 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ed Carp <ecarp@netcom.com>
To: Jim Sewell <jims@Central.KeyWest.MPGN.COM>
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com
In-Reply-To: <9404271330.AA04421@Central.KeyWest.MPGN.COM>
On Wed, 27 Apr 1994, Jim Sewell wrote:
> ObCrypt: Has anyone heard of work in the area of encrypting all information
> on a computer and build the authentication software into the
> operating system so the only practical chance of intrusion is a
> forgetful operator?
Yes, in fact, that's been talked about. There's a DES-based loop driver
for disks floating around, and I've kicked around the idea of hacking
exec() and the back-end to gcc so that ld would use PGP to digitally sign
a binary based on a serial number in the kernel, and having exec() use
PGP to verify that the binary hadn't been tampered with. I suppose the
same idea could also be used to encrypt binaries, so that the binary
couldn't be tampered with and would only run on that machine. Not a real
problem to implement, really.
