Re: Thinking outside the box - private keys

On 3/17/2013 3:59 AM, Cedric Knight wrote:
> On 17/03/13 05:16, Marc Perkel wrote:
>> OK - let's think outside the box. Let's pretend e,ail as we know is
>> going away and we are going to create an entirely new system from
>> scratch. Nothing has to be compatible. How would we do it right?
> An invitation to brainstorm and daydream?  Why not?
>
> I think you'd be looking for a means of private communication that is
> flexible, administratively simple, not tied to any particular provider,
> but which is free to require more modern processor resources and
> connectivity than SMTP.  I'd suggest a decentralised web of trust where
> each address is linked to a public key (as at present there would be a
> potential many-to-many relation between address and individual, but in
> most cases one address is one individual).  One recipient site may
> choose to trust given academic institution's key with trust 0.9, which
> trusts most of its students with trust 0.9, which to the first
> (recipient) site means 0.81.  That institution has the responsibility of
> publishing its trust level for compromised student accounts, but that
> doesn't stop any other site also having an opinion (equivalent of RBLs).
>   Similarly, default trust levels might be 0.5 for a good
> freemail/free-ID provider (if such things are even needed), which might
> trust new accounts starting at 0.01 until behaviour (such as two-way
> correspondence with trusted accounts) earns them trust.
>
> Trust and behaviour is computed during initial handshake from the
> supplied public keys of sender and authorities, and anything below a
> given level is rejected with immediate feedback to sender.  (Recipients
> could also choose to trust a memorable plaintext address, name or number
> for a given period if expecting mail from a physical contact, as a
> convenient alternative to exchanging a key in person or receiving it
> through a third party.)  Direct delivery from client to postbox would
> eliminate MSAs, store-and-forward and backscatter.  Trust would be based
> on cryptographic identity, not network topology, so would be adaptable
> to transports other than IPv4.
>
> That kind of thing, Mark?
>
> BTW Thanks John for keeping the list going.  I've lost my digest setting
> from mailman, so sent "set asrg digest-MIME" to
> [email protected].  A footer would be good, and I suspect many
> ex-digest users would appreciated to at least go "prefix".
>
> C
YES - in fact this is similar to one of my ideas so the fact that you 
thought of it to - great minds think alike.

Suppose at the domain level the public key was published through DNS. 
All email was encrypted and no one can spoof you because you would need 
the private key to decrypt the email. A spoofer wouldn't have the 
private key. (I suppose forwarded email would have to be decrypted and 
reencrypted by the forwarder.)

I like it - thinking outside the box.