Re: The Packwood Memorial Diary Server

[Jim McCoy <mccoy@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu>]

Mats Bergstrom <matsb@sos.sll.se> writes:
> On Wed, 26 Jan 1994, Jim Miller wrote:
> > If true, I guess the next question becomes:  How can you offer a service  
> > to the Internet, but make it impossible for a Bad Guy to physically
> > locate you?
> 
> [In] a speech by Donn Parker, presumably The Great Bald Eagle Of Computer
> Crime, at a secutity conference. [Parker mentions] Phantom Nodes on the
> Internet as  a possible future 'problem'. I guess this might be related.

This has been an idea of sorts that I have been tossing around to Doug down
here over bagels and coffee; how to decouple the server from any single
physical host or subset of hosts in a cooperating pool.  There is some
interesting work in secure multi-party computation protocols that might be
coupled with a distributed MUD-like server to create a system that can act
as an information server or broker without needing a specific physical
location.   

It would take some hacking to get things to work together, but it might be
possible to create a network of servers that listen for RPCish requests
from various other members of the network and together they might provide
enough ambiguity regarding where the actual server resides.  It would take
some work, but it should be possible...

jim