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"James A. Donald" <[email protected]> writes:

> On 2012-09-05 11:51 PM, StealthMonger wrote:

>> Can there be a cryptographic "dead man switch"?  A secret is to be
>> revealed only if/when signed messages stop appearing.  It is to be
>> cryptographically strong and not rely on a trusted other party.

> Such a system cannot exist:

> Obviously the messages have to appear on the system that contains the 
> secret.  Pull the internet connection.

Counter-measures to Donald's dilemma have so far involved servers too
hidden or numerous to simply "pull the internet connection".

Another approach is for the server to be "too big to fail", i.e.
public and widely used, so that a whole business would be destroyed if
the Internet connection were pulled.

It wouldn't take much capability in such a server to allow Grantor to
create a robot there which gives Trustee access to the secret, but
only if it doesn't hear from the Grantor for some time.  With suitable
permissions, the Trustee can even be given read-only access the whole
while to everything except to the secret itself, so that Trustee can
assure herself that it's all actually there.

Are there existing public servers that can provide this functionality?
Google mail?  Zooko's Tahoe?


- -- 


 -- StealthMonger <[email protected]>
    Long, random latency is part of the price of Internet anonymity.

   anonget: Is this anonymous browsing, or what?
   
http://groups.google.ws/group/alt.privacy.anon-server/msg/073f34abb668df33?dmode=source&output=gplain

   stealthmail: Hide whether you're doing email, or when, or with whom.
   mailto:[email protected]?subject=send%20index.html


Key: mailto:[email protected]?subject=send%20stealthmonger-key

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