I think Tim was referring to someone gleaning your private key, which would be a Disastrous Thing (tm). If that's not what he was referring to, I still think it's a possiblity. Kurt ---------- From: Martin Diehl[SMTP:mdiehl@dttus.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 1996 13:59 To: cypherpunks@toad.com Subject: Re: Spiderspace On 1/16/96 12:35 PM, tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May) at Internet-USA wrote:

I've been thinking a lot about the problems and opportunities that are coming up as more and more "spiders" (Web searchers, crawlers) are indexing directories and files on systems they can find.

[snip]

Sure enough, a search of "Cyberia-l" in Alta Vista showed all sorts of hits, including what appeared to be several _private archives_ of parts of the traffic. (By "private" I mean in the sense that they were someone's personal archives, and not necessarily complete or even semi-officially sanctioned.)

[snip]

I've started to look for things like PGP files laying around buried in subdirectories. I can imagine attacks based on this.

[snip]

Fourth...left to your imagination.

--Tim May

We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----

Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero

W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,

Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

I gather that it would be a Bad Thing (TM) to have someone get both the encrypted and clear text forms of your message (from either you or from the recipient) Maybe regularly changing your encryption keys is a Good Thing (TM) Martin G. Diehl