[Cryptography] Dumb idea: open-source hardware USB key for crypto

[stef]

On Sat, Jan 11, 2014 at 02:35:39AM -0500, grarpamp wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 5:53 PM, Bill Cox <waywardgeek at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I've been noodling the idea of a USB stick designed in a way that we
> > can trust the crypto that goes on there.  It's a hard problem, but
> > there seems to be some guidelines that could help:

as hinted earlier in the pcp/pbp discussion, i'm working on such a beast:
   https://www.ctrlc.hu/~stef/PITCHFORK.pdf

> > Anyway, it's just a fun idea.  I'd love to have such a
> > device in my pocket.  There's a lot of applications I can think of
> > that could benefit from it, from electronic voting to
> > microtransactions.

PITCHFORK will allow you to develop your own extensions, so indeed i expect a
lot of experiments and innovation if this gets off.

currently some of my code has licensing problems and needs to be reimplemented
before publication :/

> Many of these open hardware ideas come down to the fab level...

indeed, there's a lot of trust in things we have limited resources to
validate. turtles all the way down.

-- 
pgp: https://www.ctrlc.hu/~stef/stef.gpg
pgp fp: FD52 DABD 5224 7F9C 63C6  3C12 FC97 D29F CA05 57EF
otr fp: https://www.ctrlc.hu/~stef/otr.txt