On Tuesday 29 October 2002 19:34, Anonymous via the Cypherpunks Tonga Remailer wrote:
What technology is available to create a 2048-bit RSA key pair so that:
2 - no one knows the secret part,
3 - The secret part is kept in the "box" and it is safe as long as the box is physically secured (expense of securing the box is a don't care).
8 - the key must never be destroyed, so backup is essential.
2 and 8 seem to be contradictory. Unless you just back up on the box, as Tim mentioned. That's not much of a backup. If you're treating this box as an unrepairable black box, you'd just throw it away and use a new one if it broke. That would technically meet these requirements, but it would require sending out the public keys occasionally and it would make it possible for Fred to fraudulently sign a message and claim it came from one of the replacement boxes. If there were a single, eternal signing box he wouldn't be able to get away with that. -- Steve Furlong Computer Condottiere Have GNU, Will Travel Vote Idiotarian --- it's easier than thinking