[guardian-dev] pgp key server on gaurdianproject.info

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On 09/17/2013 05:09 PM, Michael Rogers wrote:
> On 16/09/13 23:00, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
>> Yes!  This is a kind of form of "secure introduction" which I think
>> would also be very valuable.  Something like "continuous auditing".
>> So if every signed email included the secure introduction material,
>> then a receiving app could easily check that data every time it
>> received it.
> 
> I believe the Mailpile developers are considering a feature like this.
> 
> There's a potential privacy risk: Alice may know Bob's public key, but
> she may not want to reveal to Carol that she knows Bob. So the app
> needs to be careful about which public keys it shares. If the app
> looks at Alice's mail headers, it can see whether she's ever sent an
> email to Carol that had Bob in the To: or Cc: list. If so, Carol
> already knows that Alice knows Bob, and thus the app can send Bob's
> public key to Carol without harming Alice's privacy.
> 
> Cheers,
> Michael

This seems a really minor privacy leak, if one at all.  If Alice is emailing
the Bob and CCing Carol, then its obvious to everyone that Alice already had
Bob's email.  So Alice could have just as easily gotten Bob's fingerprint at
the same time as the email address.  Especially once secure introductions
become widespread, that would be the case.

I think the key to having this working is to have it continuous, transparent,
and automatic.

.hc

-- 
PGP fingerprint: 5E61 C878 0F86 295C E17D  8677 9F0F E587 374B BE81

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 939 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.mayfirst.org/pipermail/guardian-dev/attachments/20130917/8adb7d68/attachment.pgp>