On Wed, 31 Jul 2002, Anonymous wrote:
Such an approach suffers from the "bad guy" occasionally signing a good file, thus placing himself on the trusted signer list.
This assumes a boolean trust metric. What you need is a trust scalar, and a mechanism to prevent Malory poisoning it. It should use scarce resources (e.g. crunch) to generate a trust currency in each node, a kind of decentralized mint (nothing crunches quite a few million boxes on the Net). Clearly there will be some inflation, as systems tend to get faster these days. The algorithm should resist FPGAzation, too (Mallory is inventive).
A better approach is for the downloader to create his own trusted list, along the lines of PGP web of trust. Ideal for exactly this
The infrastructure needs to be hidden out of view. If you query the net for a specific document, those signed by most trusted parties should come up first. And when you download and sample a document the GUI should offer positive/negative karma buttons for easy grading.
application. The downloader can add and subtract from the trusted signer list at will, with no central control. Since one must expect some trusted signers to get busted and move to the dark side under court order, such downloader control is necessary.
Problematic is that mp3 and other compression processes do not generate bit-identical files. Two perfect mp3 files may have different md5 hashes, for example. A tool for making bit-identical mp3 files
Doesn't matter, as long a single good copy gets out & gets amplified. Plus, you can get different cryptohash URIs for minor variations on content, as long they're published by somebody trusted.
from the same digital input is needed, so that a single signed hash can verify the same file from multiple origins.