A non-political issue

[Steve Furlong]

On Tuesday 29 October 2002 19:34, Anonymous via the Cypherpunks Tonga 
Remailer wrote:
> What technology is available to create a 2048-bit RSA key pair so
> that:
>
> 2 - no one knows the secret part,
>
> 3 - The secret part is kept in the "box" and it is safe as long as
> the box is physically secured (expense of securing the box is a don't
> care).
>
> 8 - the key must never be destroyed, so backup is essential.

2 and 8 seem to be contradictory. Unless you just back up on the box, as 
Tim mentioned. That's not much of a backup.

If you're treating this box as an unrepairable black box, you'd just 
throw it away and use a new one if it broke. That would technically 
meet these requirements, but it would require sending out the public 
keys occasionally and it would make it possible for Fred to 
fraudulently sign a message and claim it came from one of the 
replacement boxes. If there were a single, eternal signing box he 
wouldn't be able to get away with that.

-- 
Steve Furlong    Computer Condottiere   Have GNU, Will Travel

Vote Idiotarian --- it's easier than thinking