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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