🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5894@transfer.stratus.com> cme@ellisun.sw.stratus.com (Carl Ellison) writes:
>In article <1992Aug21.864.168@ALMAC> keith.willis@almac.co.uk writes:
>>
>>        RSA public keys certified by genetic fingerprint, that being
>>        verifiable against that held by a central trusted authority?
>>
>
>
>I just don't see what the big deal is.  You'll never meet me.  You
>can't care what I look like much less what genes I have.  If you were to
>know, would that make my identification any more positive?
>
>
>If I give you an RSA key, that's all you need.  I'm the only one in the world
>who knows the two primes in N.  That defines *me*.  Balding head or not,
>height, weight, ..., even gender is all irrelevant.
>
>I can prove I know those primes by signing something.  You can verify that
>I know the primes, without learning the primes -- therefore without becoming
>able to pretend to be me.
>
>What more do you want?


Well, you can't prove that you've kept those primes secret and haven't told
anybody else about them, for instance....

And during such circumstances (we've never met and never will meet, I'm not
interested in any positive ID like genes, fingerprints etc, and all I know
is that you say that you've signed a messages and haven't revealed to anyone
else how to sign it in the same way), who needs RSA signatures?  They would
really say no more than your name and email address. Actually they would
even say less, since your email address at least tells where you're located.

For RSA signatures to be meaningful, there must be a good reason to use it.
I.e. the sender must have a good reason not to reveal his signatures, and
the receiver must have a good reason to know who actually sent the message.
If this doesn't metter too much, then RSA is not needed.

-- 
---
Paul Schlyter, Swedish Amateur Astronomer's Society (SAAF)
Nybrogatan 75 A, 6 tr,  S-114 40 Stockholm,  Sweden
InterNet:  pausch@saaf.se