cryptographically secure mailing list software
I've been curious as to whether anyone has developed and/or whether it is technically feasible to develop a cryptographically secure listserver. e.g. User would submit their PGP public key to the listserver upon subscription, submitted messages would be encrypted with the listserver's public key, the listserver would decrypt the message and re-encrypt it with the key of all members and distribute it. This way the users don't need to manage all the keys or even know the list membership. Most listservers already have the ability to moderate subscription messages, the list would not be snoopable. What sort of overhead would exist on a list of a few hundred members? If there is not something existing that will do this, what is the best mailing list codebase to start from? Majodomo I imagine might not be up to the task being written in Perl, LSoft ListSERV I love but it is commercial (no sourcecode). Matt
Matthew James Gering writes:
I've been curious as to whether anyone has developed and/or whether it is technically feasible to develop a cryptographically secure listserver.
e.g.
User would submit their PGP public key to the listserver upon subscription, submitted messages would be encrypted with the listserver's public key, the listserver would decrypt the message and re-encrypt it with the key of all members and distribute it. This way the users don't need to manage all the keys or even know the list membership. Most listservers already have the ability to moderate subscription messages, the list would not be snoopable.
What sort of overhead would exist on a list of a few hundred members?
At ~1sec/ encryption (varies greatly depending on your list hardware, should be less on a newer PC) adding an extra 200 seconds of CPU time for each mail message to the list is probably acceptable.
If there is not something existing that will do this
Check out PGPdomo. I found a copy at: ftp://hawww.ha.osd.mil/pgpdomo/pgpdomo.tar.Z -- Eric Murray N*Able Technologies www.nabletech.com (email: ericm at the sites lne.com or nabletech.com) PGP keyid:E03F65E5
participants (2)
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Eric Murray -
Matthew James Gering