On Aug 29, 2008, at 12:43 PM, Dave Cridland wrote:
On Fri Aug 29 12:11:11 2008, Pedro Melo wrote:
Well, I have this thing called a roster, and some of them I
already have certified as being the person I expect them to be.
And for some of those, I actually trust their judgement. So why
not asking them if they know this person? And if yes, what's the
signature they know them by?
Hmmm. A protocol allowing me to discover if another jid is on your
roster?
interesting choice of words :), but actually is more like this:
"Hey, I have this JID here that I want to talk to. Do you know him?
and if yes, can you give me the fingerprint that you know him by?"
The JID is provided by my own free will. There is no assertion that
this JID is on my roster.
There's two issues:
First off, if I'm in your roster, you might ask me about Dirk's
fingerprint - in which case, I know that you're talking to Dirk,
which is pretty awesome. We can shield this one by hashing the jid,
so I can then scan through my hashes-of-known-jids and at least only
know you're talking to Dirk if I previously have as well.
Sure. One step further is this: I send you an hash of Dirk's JID +
Dick's offered fingerprint. If you have the same, you can tell me that
"yes, I trusted something like that already".
This way you will only know whom I'm talking to if you have previously
accepted the same pair JID+Fingerprint.
Even less information disclosure.
Second, if I reply with a fingerprint match, I'm verifying not only
the fingerprint, but that I, too, have spoken to Dirk and confirmed
him, so you can run away and tell everyone we're co-conspirators.
Yes, but I can't see how to ask you do confirm something for me
without telling you this much. Maybe someone else can.
But I like using the Roster as a Web-of-Trust...
Best regards,
--
Pedro Melo
Blog: http://www.simplicidade.org/notes/
XMPP ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Use XMPP!
