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On Wed, 26 Jul 2000, Eugene Leitl wrote:
> > Clearly, you can maintain a secure connection to an anonymous
> > party.
At 08:08 AM 7/27/2000 +0000, amanda wrote:
> No you cannot. If Bob is anonymous then it is impossible for Alice
> to know if her secure connection goes to Bob or Mitch.
Probably what Eugene means is that one can maintain a secure connection to
a nymous party.
IMPP server ids normally look like email ids.
Though one might not know that [EMAIL PROTECTED] was the really an aide
to president clinton, one could use cryptographic means to ensure that it
was the same deep throat as gave you the good information last time, and
not a Clinton plumber checking for leaks.
Crypto Kong <www.jim.com/jamesd/Kong> is an example of a purely nymous
protocol.
The proposed IMPP security protocol
<http://catalog.com/jamesd/kong/secure_video.htm> is not purely nymous,
since one could look at Deepthroat's face and possibly recognize him, but
it is not a true name protocol, since anyone could create an account called
[EMAIL PROTECTED], if no other BillGates got there first.
Verisign is an example of a true name protocol.
All three protocols use public keys, but they use them to prove different
things about the identity of the person one is talking to.
We have an accepted terminology for protocols like that of Crypto Kong --
nym based.
We have an accepted terminology for protocols like that of Verisign "true
names", (an unenthusiastic minority prefer the terminology "Mark of the
beast".)
We will need a new terminology for the protocol I have proposed. I propose
to call it "face based".
--digsig
James A. Donald
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4WvqXU6X/MzeDKbKw7nWWoDSLWxj5oy30+ptrZx+P
