On 08/31/13 08:27, grarpamp wrote:
Hopefully all the plaintext protocols will die soon and some replacement for the CA cert model is agreed upon so that there isn't much left to bet on exitwise but the dest ip:port working. _______________________________________________ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
Exactly what I'm proposing with Eccentric Authentication. [0]
It is a way to replace password authentication with client certificates. And to replace plaintext with TLS. Certificates are signed by the web site that will accept them, not by central CAs that can MitM.
I foresee that each user has a multitude of certificates. At least one for each web site where they replace the passwords, probably more as you can have multiple accounts at a site easily.
Each certificate is *an anonymous* identity, not *the user's identity*. Certificates contain only the public key and a chosen username that the user chooses when signing up at a site.
With the certificate, users can authenticate at a site with one of their identities. As the certificates contain the public key, other people can send encrypted messages to each other via the web site. It could be a blog site or dating site. As the messages are encrypted, not even the site operators can learn the contents of the message.
Let's add VOIP.
Say Bob opens a ZRTP-listener on his computer. He does three things:
1. He configures it with his dating-site certificate and private key.
2. He also configures it that it *only* accepts connections that are identified with the certificate of someone else on the dating site, say Alice's certificate.
3. He sends Alice an encrypted message through the dating site where he specifies the ZRTP-endpoint.
Then he waits until Alice places the call. (If she decides to do so). When he receives a call, it can only be Alice as she's the only one with the private key that matches her certificate.
Now they can talk in private. Not even the dating site learns that they are calling. The site is not involved at all. The call goes direct from one computer to the other.
What we have done here is to use the dating site as *introducer* between two strangers so they can exchange public keys without ever having met before.
All it takes is a *public* forum, a dating site, blog site, comments section at a newspaper to introduce strangers to each other so they can communicate *privately*.
The Eccentric protocol makes it easy to create these introducers, so there is not a single identity to block.
Notice. The eccentric authentication protocol does not address traffic analysis/ metadata. Use Tor for that.
Cheers, Guido.
[0] http://eccentric-authentication.org/eccentric-authentication/five-minute-ove...
You can run it yourself (download and run it in a VM!) from here: http://eccentric-authentication.org/blog/2013/06/07/run-it-yourself.html