Interesting People mailing list archives
Re: Vanish: Self-destructing digital data
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2009 20:34:56 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Seth David Schoen <schoen () loyalty org> Date: July 23, 2009 6:34:30 PM EDT To: David Farber <dave () farber net> Cc: Bruce Schechter <bruce () schechter com> Subject: Re: [IP] Re: Vanish: Self-destructing digital data David Farber writes:
Begin forwarded message: From: Bruce Schechter <bruce () schechter com> Date: July 23, 2009 5:37:18 PM EDT To: David Farber <dave () farber net> Subject: RE: Vanish: Self-destructing digital data Hi Dave, For IP, if you wish... Forgive me if this is a naïve question, but can someone please explain the use case where self-destructing data is practical, given that arecipient of the data could copy it, save it, take a "screenshot", etc.,before the bullet is fired on self-destruction?
These authors specifically noted that: Trusted data owners. Users with legitimate access to the same VDOs trust each other. [... This] aspect of the threat model is straightforward, and in fact is a shared assumption with traditional encryption schemes: it would be impossible for our system to protect against a user who chooses to leak or permanently preserve the cleartext contents of a VDO-encapsulated file through out-of-band means. For example, if Ann sends Carla a VDO-encapsulated email, Ann must trust Carla not to print and store a hard-copy of the email in cleartext. So this system is meant for the case where the sender and recipient agree about how long the data should be accessible, and want an automated way to implement that policy without further human intervention. It's not any kind of attempt at a DRM system. You can compare this to OTR, http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/ (great software which I highly recommend installing in your IM client right away), where the chat participants agree that they do not want or need the ability to decrypt the chat after the fact -- but either of them could save a full unencrypted transcript during the course of the chat, if they were so inclined. -- Seth David Schoen <schoen () loyalty org> | Qué empresa fácil no pensar en http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | un tigre, reflexioné. http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/ | -- Borges, El Zahir ------------------------------------------- Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Current thread:
- Vanish: Self-destructing digital data David Farber (Jul 22)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: Vanish: Self-destructing digital data David Farber (Jul 22)
- Re: Vanish: Self-destructing digital data David Farber (Jul 23)
- Re: Vanish: Self-destructing digital data David Farber (Jul 23)
- Re: Vanish: Self-destructing digital data David Farber (Jul 23)
- Re: Vanish: Self-destructing digital data David Farber (Jul 23)
- Re: Vanish: Self-destructing digital data David Farber (Jul 23)