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Today at the OpenPGP meeting, I announced some new features for OpenPGP.
The attendees thought that I should send them to the list, stressing that
it was vital they get sent today, even before the minutes get posted to the
list.
The first new feature is a new type of signature, "Message Validity
Signatures." These new signatures are a mechanism that contains information
that allows a user to determine whether a message is true. This new
technology has a number of uses, particularly with electronic commerce and
digital contracts. They also employ an extension to the PGP Web of Trust
called the Web of Contempt.
The Web of Contempt is a cumulative system that uses aggregate information
from a family of users. It mirrors the Web of Trust and has in it
user-customizable settings for Partially Contemptible Keys, Completely
Contemptible Keys, and Axiomatically Contemptible Keys. The last ones are
the root keys from which the PGP contempt model extends contempt. This new
mechanism is especially useful for diplomacy and other systems that require
plausible deniability, withering remarks, faint praise, or backhand
compliments.
A new type of signature, the "Anti-Identity Signature" allows a user to
declare that they do not have a given identity. For example, a user can
declare that he or she is not Bill Clinton. It also allows a user to
declare that someone else does not have a certain identity, perhaps
attesting that someone else is not Bill Clinton. Lastly, when used in
combination with the Web of Contempt, a group of users can combine their
digital signatures to invalidate the identity of another certificate. This
is especially useful for fighting the widespread crime of identity theft,
by revoking the stolen identity. It also works in situations where you want
to keep a person around, but want someone else to fulfill that role. This
new signature type can also solve the Internet problem of email spam by
letting users revoke the identity of spammers.
Bit-Sorted Escrow is a technique that satisfies the concerns that law
enforcement agencies have about cryptography, while preserving the privacy
needed for electronic commerce. In Bit-Sorted Escrow, the user can reserve
40 (which do not have to be contiguous) bits of a key to remain secret, and
the other remaining bits are sorted (big-endian, zeroes to the MSB), and
then sent to the Bit-Sorted Escrow Server run by the United States
Department of Justice at <ldaps://bsescrow.doj.gov>. This has the advantage
of providing strong cryptography for honest users while giving the
government the access to message content that it deserves.
Many organizations need to test the implementations of their public key
infrastructure, especially when rapidly deploying new systems such as the
Web of Contempt to a large introduction. PGP 6.6.6 implements a new
solution to this problem, called the Beta-Introducer. A Beta-Introducer
allows an organization to test out their infrastructure, while not actually
granting undue trust or contempt to their members.
We are also going to start working on some new RFCs for two new servers and
some more infrastructure.
The first new server is the "Passphrase Recovery Server." The largest
obstacle to deploying strong crypto is that people keep forgetting their
passphrases. Even people at the IETF from time to time have to tell someone
not to use a key because they have lost their passphrase. A Passphrase
Recovery Server lets a user who has lost their passphrase get a new one.
The second sever is the "Key Generation Server." Many, many organizations
have people who are (as Mel Brooks put it) "the salt of the earth." These
people are incapable of generating their own keys, so they can get them
from the server.
Interestingly, the combination of these is quite powerful. People who lose
their passphrases some number of times can be given a new key from the key
generation server (or perhaps one that's specified in the RFC), and have
their settings appropriately modified in the Web of Contempt.
The last new RFC is for a generalized Emotion-Model System. Having already
two emotions, trust and contempt, we should define the general case. It can
work with a web of affection (useful for computer dating services), a web
of benevolence (for charitable organizations), or even a web of lust
(useful for the Executive Branch).
As time permits, we will do more work on these new systems. I'd like it if
this time next year, there were some drafts that could be sent to the
working group. If anyone wants to work on these drafts, let me know,
especially if they have any ideas for new things to suggest then.
Jon
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Jon Callas jon(_at_)pgp(_dot_)com
CTO, Total Network Security 4200 Bohannon Drive
Network Associates, Inc. Menlo Park, CA 94025
(650) 473-2860
Fingerprints: D1EC 3C51 FCB1 67F8 4345 4A04 7DF9 C2E6 F129 27A9 (DSS)
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