At 05:59 PM 11/1/00 -0500, Adam Shostack wrote:
Matt Blaze did some work on non-subvertable key escrow, where you escrow keys with random folks, and when you, or Uncle Sam, want the key, you announce that, and hope to get the key back. Let me be clear that this also is not what we're doing. :)
| Strong crypto means the employee can put an invincible lock on the | corporate file cabinet. This might mean that invincible locks are | not used in corporations. A corporation might require that any | invincible physical locks be used in series, so the corp can get into the | files if the first lock stays locked. That doesn't seem wrong | to me; and in meatspace two locks in series is obvious and no compromise | is made to either lock's design. | | Maybe no escrow per se, but corp. data is duplicated and each copy is | encrypted by a person's bizkey and the corporate shared key for that
person.
| Locks in series. | | (Now, it may be 'sad' that ZKS has changed its bizmodel to service | businesses that need locks in series, but I'm only interested in | whether its rational to universally denounce any locks-in-series | architectures.)
Thats not really it. We're much more focused on layered locks than series locks. I would worry a lot about the architecture you outline above being vulnerable to a whole slew of attacks on any one key, which means an N key system is at least N times as vulnerable.
I was suggesting using a split key, where it would take collaboration amongst N of M board members to assemble the second corporate-backup key. These kind of redundancy schemes are brilliant. Tolerating turncoats and car accidents. Series + parallel padlocks has interesting properties.
| >The "relevant legislation" language is the real kicker. | | Though this was elaborated on in a later reply, they really do need to | specify what they mean exactly (re Canada & 'consumer privacy') when | they say the nasty l-word in their public literature. Any mention of the | law in crypto lit turns the stomache, puts the scanners on highest | sensitivity.
When we say 'nasty l-word' you can assume we're refering to CALEA, RIP, and that sort of thing. When we talk about legislative compliance, we mean complying with that whole slew of privacy laws.
Govt "privacy" laws are a subset of what you should be doing, so more power to you, as they say.
As to the hypothetical that Tim will ask, we'll work very hard to prevent laws requiring key escrow from coming into being.
Your bodily fluids remain pure. We spend
time and energy maintaining relations with law enforcement in a lot of places, explaining to them why we don't build in back doors.
Please video and archive. Taxpayers want to know. And,
suprisingly, when you go and talk to them, rather than hissing and shouting, they listen.
Adam
Of course they do, they're adsorbing intel. Good luck, dh