Intro & Keystone

[fnordbox!loydb@cs.utexas.edu (Loyd Blankenship)]

First, as a newcomer, and introduction. My name is Loyd Blankenship. I am
the Product Development Manager at Steve Jackson Games, and was the
employee raided by the Secret Service that set off the formation of the
EFF, our lawsuit against them, and much angst within the government. I also
use the nome de' plume "The Mentor" when traversing the computer underground.

On to stuff relevant to the list:

A group of us here in Austin have spent a great deal of time discussing
the advantages of RSA-encrypted e-mail. I'm putting a BBS back up later
in the year, and would like to offer secure communications to my users.
Since the threat of seizure is very real (the feds still have over $10,000
(1989 street price) of computer equipment of mine since I'm "still under
investigation"), this needs to be implemented before the message is ever
written to hard disk.

To implement this, I'm currently trying to get PGP up on my Amiga, then
write the necessary C & AREXX functions to link it in with my BBS's (DLG
Pro) email function.

The outgrowth of this was the Keystone project. We're going to attempt to
get everyone in Austin cyberspace public-key capable, and get a master
keyring that will be regularly distributed via a trusted system to other
nodes in town. Ideally, you would be able to send RSA-encrypted email from
any bbs on any of the local nets to any other bbs -- even if all you know
is the destination address. We're going to do this by attempting to make
the bbs PGP-friendly. All the user has to do is generate a key pair.

The two potential weak links in this chain are line security and key
validation. The first is almost insurmountable -- unless the user takes the
time to d/l a complete copy of PGP and the Austin Keystone Keyring and
encrypt the mail on their home system. But if not, then they have to live
with the chance that someone is data-tapping. The second will rely on
face-to-face identification -- this is why we're making this a local effort.

It will probably be Christmas (when I have a 3-week vacation) before serious
strides are made in this, but I'm interested in any comments people may
have.

Loyd

p.s. What is this "game" you are talking about?

***************************************************************************
* loydb@fnordbox.UUCP	     Once you pull the pin,  *	Loyd Blankenship  *
* GEnie: SJGAMES	    Mr. Grenade is no longer *	PO Box 18957	  *
* Compu$erve: [73407,515]	 your friend!	     *	Austin, TX 78760  *
* cs.utexas.edu!dogface!fnordbox!loydb		     *	512/447-7866	  *
***************************************************************************