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@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@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@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@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. > > -- > tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk@lists.torproject.org > To unsubscribe or change other settings go to > https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk@lists.torproject.org To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
