First, as a newcomer, and introduction. My name is Loyd Blankenship. I am the Product Development Manager at Steve Jackson Games, and was the employee raided by the Secret Service that set off the formation of the EFF, our lawsuit against them, and much angst within the government. I also use the nome de' plume "The Mentor" when traversing the computer underground. On to stuff relevant to the list: A group of us here in Austin have spent a great deal of time discussing the advantages of RSA-encrypted e-mail. I'm putting a BBS back up later in the year, and would like to offer secure communications to my users. Since the threat of seizure is very real (the feds still have over $10,000 (1989 street price) of computer equipment of mine since I'm "still under investigation"), this needs to be implemented before the message is ever written to hard disk. To implement this, I'm currently trying to get PGP up on my Amiga, then write the necessary C & AREXX functions to link it in with my BBS's (DLG Pro) email function. The outgrowth of this was the Keystone project. We're going to attempt to get everyone in Austin cyberspace public-key capable, and get a master keyring that will be regularly distributed via a trusted system to other nodes in town. Ideally, you would be able to send RSA-encrypted email from any bbs on any of the local nets to any other bbs -- even if all you know is the destination address. We're going to do this by attempting to make the bbs PGP-friendly. All the user has to do is generate a key pair. The two potential weak links in this chain are line security and key validation. The first is almost insurmountable -- unless the user takes the time to d/l a complete copy of PGP and the Austin Keystone Keyring and encrypt the mail on their home system. But if not, then they have to live with the chance that someone is data-tapping. The second will rely on face-to-face identification -- this is why we're making this a local effort. It will probably be Christmas (when I have a 3-week vacation) before serious strides are made in this, but I'm interested in any comments people may have. Loyd p.s. What is this "game" you are talking about? *************************************************************************** * loydb@fnordbox.UUCP Once you pull the pin, * Loyd Blankenship * * GEnie: SJGAMES Mr. Grenade is no longer * PO Box 18957 * * Compu$erve: [73407,515] your friend! * Austin, TX 78760 * * cs.utexas.edu!dogface!fnordbox!loydb * 512/447-7866 * ***************************************************************************