Shell's authentication needs

[James A. Donald]

On Tue, 24 Jan 1995, Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
> It's not as elegant as time stamping, because you really need face-to-face
> contact. And you need to trust the stamper not to lie about his location (I
> can't remember how much you need to trust a time-stamper, but I think it's
> less).

You do not need to trust the time stamper at all, because from time
to time he publishes a one way checksum of everything he has
time stamped, or rather the audit trail for everything he
has time stamped.

So if the credibility of his stamp is questioned he just produces
the audit trail, and you know that the audit trail must have 
been created at the time claimed, because its checksum was
published at the time claimed.


 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
                                          |  
We have the right to defend ourselves     |   http://www.catalog.com/jamesd/
and our property, because of the kind     |  
of animals that we are. True law          |   James A. Donald
derives from this right, not from the     |  
arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.  |   jamesd at netcom.com