Authenticating Meat [was Re: Thanks for the living hell]

Major Variola (ret) mv at cdc.gov
Fri Apr 25 15:54:05 PDT 2003


At 06:01 PM 4/25/03 -0400, Patrick Chkoreff wrote:
>Major Variola (ret) wrote:
>
>> At 02:20 PM 4/25/03 -0400, someone claiming to be Patrick Chkoreff
>> wrote:
>
>(-:  The sig is valid for the key at http://fexl.com/keys/patrick.txt)

I didn't doubt that it was.  However, my caveat
remains true, and you haven't proved anything additional.

An entity claiming that name, and claiming to be
not-a-bot, and apparently controlling the DNS entry
at the server I checked today for fexl.com today,
has signed a message.  Yep, I believe [1] that.

I'm not picking on you.  Neither am I trying to be a dick;
skeptical socratics sometimes appear so.  Check the archives
for extended discussion as to what, exactly, signing proves.

On the other hand, *whatever* entity has been signing
these messages collects the reputations associated with
them *more reliably*[1] than merely posting under your
name.  Maybe you're a 14 year old girl pretending to
be an FBI agent pretending to be a cryptographer :-)

Making the leap from key-holder to meatspace
entity is unsound unless something in meatspace demonstrates
it.  You're all bits from here.

-----
[1] Note that these beliefs are moderated by unfounded
trust in PGP implem & algs, that you've protected
your private key, etc.  But we'll grant that for now.

-----
"With a laser printer, you can get away with anything"
--a Quark-using confederate in the late 80s, referring
to the widespread trust of finely printed documents
at the time





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