Hollywood Hackers

[Eugen Leitl]

On Wed, 31 Jul 2002, Anonymous wrote:

> Such an approach suffers from the "bad guy" occasionally signing a
> good file, thus placing himself on the trusted signer list.

This assumes a boolean trust metric. What you need is a trust scalar, and
a mechanism to prevent Malory poisoning it. It should use scarce resources
(e.g. crunch) to generate a trust currency in each node, a kind of
decentralized mint (nothing crunches quite a few million boxes on the
Net). Clearly there will be some inflation, as systems tend to get faster
these days. The algorithm should resist FPGAzation, too (Mallory is
inventive).
 
> A better approach is for the downloader to create his own trusted
> list, along the lines of PGP web of trust. Ideal for exactly this

The infrastructure needs to be hidden out of view. If you query the net
for a specific document, those signed by most trusted parties should come
up first. And when you download and sample a document the GUI should offer
positive/negative karma buttons for easy grading.

> application. The downloader can add and subtract from the trusted
> signer list at will, with no central control. Since one must expect
> some trusted signers to get busted and move to the dark side under
> court order, such downloader control is necessary.
> 
> Problematic is that mp3 and other compression processes do not
> generate bit-identical files. Two perfect mp3 files may have different
> md5 hashes, for example. A tool for making bit-identical mp3 files

Doesn't matter, as long a single good copy gets out & gets amplified.
Plus, you can get different cryptohash URIs for minor variations on 
content, as long they're published by somebody trusted.

> from the same digital input is needed, so that a single signed hash
> can verify the same file from multiple origins.