Signing as one member of a set of keys

[Adam Shostack]

Of course, the paranoid amonsgt us now believe that Mr. Back wrote the
code, and is engaging in a little misdirection below.

"Thanks for making the analysis easy!"

;)


On Fri, Aug 09, 2002 at 08:11:15PM +0100, Adam Back wrote:
| 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.
| 

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume