Interesting New Privacy Software

[Seeker]

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86800/vanish-uses-bittorrent-to-make-data-disappear/

Much less clunky to use then previously existing existing things of this nature.

I wonder what its weak points are?

[Asher]

This doesn't look any easier than PGP?

I just don't see the point. Now pieces are distributed on the DHT, so what? There's no way to crack the PGP-encrypted text anyway without the key.

[loinburger]

I think the idea is that this way you get plausible deniability, i.e. "sorry Mr. Interrogator, I can't decrypt these here terroristic plans because the key is gone."

[loinburger]

http://lifehacker.com/5331359/vanish...xpiration-date

We created "self-destructing data" to try to address this problem. Our prototype system, called Vanish, shares some properties with existing encryption systems like PGP, but there are also some major differences.

First, someone using Vanish to "encrypt/encapsulate" information, like an email, never learns the encryption key. Second, there is a pre-specified timeout associated with each encrypted/encapsulated messages.

Prior to the timeout, anyone can read the encrypted/encapsulated message. After the timeout, no one can read that message, because the encryption key is lost due to a set of both natural and programmed processes. It is therefore impossible for anyone to decrypt/decapsulate that email after the timer expires.

There have been cases of people forced to surrender their encryption keys due to a search warrant (or rubber-hose cryptanalysis) - this is supposed to defeat search warrants by a. ensuring that the sender never knows the key and b. destroying the key after a set amount of time. So you encrypt your email with PGP and then plausibly deny it with Vanish.

[Kuciwalker]

That's a pretty neat trick.

[Sava]

what kind of paranoid douchebag needs to send encrypted emails?

[loinburger]

I encrypt my porn folder just so that the executor(s) of my will won't discover my diaper fetish.

[onodera]

what kind of paranoid douchebag needs to send encrypted emails?

A communist terrorist.

[JEELEN]

Indeed, this seems quite useful to potential terrorists.

OT: While state terrorism has been employed by various communist regimes, they are two entirely different phenomenae with an entirely different history since Bakunin and Marx clashed at the 1st International.

[onodera]

Indeed, this seems quite useful to potential terrorists.

OT: While state terrorism has been employed by various communist regimes, they are two entirely different phenomenae with an entirely different history since Bakunin and Marx clashed at the 1st International.

I was not talking about state terrorism. I was talking about the Weathermen-like terrorists.

[Dinner]

This doesn't look any easier than PGP?

I just don't see the point. Now pieces are distributed on the DHT, so what? There's no way to crack the PGP-encrypted text anyway without the key.

I thought the government forced Pretty Good Security and Pretty Good Privacy to give them a back door.

[loinburger]

There was a criminal investigation into the PGP guy for violating export controls, but it never led to any charges being filed - that's the closest the government has come to interfering with the program. (There's also at least one open-source implementation available, so anybody patient and paranoid enough can confirm that there aren't any backdoors. This is leaving aside the difficulty of putting a backdoor on encryption software - it's not as though you can hack it so that the intended key and the super-secret NSA-installed key can both decrypt the file.)

[KrazyHorse]

I encode all of my communications by hand, JUST IN CASE

[loinburger]

Yeah, in the room with all the spy cameras in it, dumbass

[KrazyHorse]

WTF do you think I am, an amateur? Operations are performed in my head.

^ 12