Signing as one member of a set of keys

[Adam Back]

Very nice.  

Nice plausible set of candidate authors also:

pub  1022/5AC7B865 1992/12/01  loki at obscura.com
pub  1024/2B48F6F5 1996/04/10  Ian Goldberg <iang at cs.berkeley.edu>
pub  1024/97558A1D 1994/01/10  Pr0duct Cypher <alt.security.pgp>
pub  1024/2719AF35 1995/05/13  Ben Laurie <ben at gonzo.ben.algroup.co.uk>
pub  1024/58214C37 1992/09/08  Hal Finney <74076.1041 at compuserve.com>
pub  1024/C8002BD1 1997/03/04  Eric Young <eay at cryptsoft.com>
pub  1024/FBBB8AB1 1994/05/07  Colin Plumb <colin at nyx.cs.du.edu>

Wonder if we can figure out who is most likely author based on coding
style from such a small set.

It has (8 char) TABs but other wise BSD indentation style (BSD
normally 4 spaces).  Also someone who likes triply indirected pointers
***blah in there.  Has local variables inside even *if code blocks*
eg, inside main() (most people avoid that, preferring to declare
variables at the top of a function, and historically I think some
older gcc / gdb couldn't debug those variables if I recall).  Very
funky use of goto in getpgppkt, hmmm.  Somewhat concise coding and
variable names.

Off the cuff guess based on coding without looking at samples of code
to remind, probably Colin or Ian.

Of course (Lance Cottrell/Ian Goldberg/Pr0duct Cypher/Ben Laurie/Hal
Finney/Eric Young/Colin Plumb) possibly deviated or mimicked one of
their coding styles.  Kind of interesting to see a true nym in there
also.

Also the Cc -- Coderpunks lives?  I think the Cc coderpunks might be a
clue also, I think some of these people would know it died.  I think
that points more at Colin.

Other potential avenue might be implementation mistake leading to
failure of the scheme to robustly make undecidable which of the set is
the true author, given alpha code.

Adam

On Fri, Aug 09, 2002 at 03:52:56AM +0000, Anonymous User wrote:
> This program can be used by anonymous contributors to release partial
> information about their identity - they can show that they are someone
> from a list of PGP key holders, without revealing which member of the
> list they are.  Maybe it can help in the recent controvery over the
> identity of anonymous posters.  It's a fairly low-level program that
> should be wrapped in a nicer UI.  I'll send a couple of perl scripts
> later that make it easier to use.