[dundee] BBC NEWS | Technology | This website will self-destruct...

[Robert Ladyman]

Yes, it would be better to be able to set an expiry date, or decay rate, or 
somesuch

> it's an awesome concept, but for one flaw in my opinion.
>
>
> "Instead, we leverage an unusual storage media in a novel way: namely,
> global-scale peer-to-peer networks. Vanish creates a secret key to encrypt
> a user's data item (such as an email), breaks the key into many pieces and
> then sprinkles the pieces across the P2P network. As machines constantly
> join and leave the P2P network, the pieces of the key gradually disappear.
> By the time the hacker or someone with a subpoena actually tries to obtain
> access to the message, the pieces of the key will have permanently
> disappeared.
>
> Our Vanish prototype uses the Vuze
> Bittorrent<http://azureus.sourceforge.net/index.php>Distributed Hash
> Table as the underlying P2P network. Our prototype by
> default supports data timeouts of 8--9
> hours<http://vanish.cs.washington.edu/faq.html#How_much_flexibility>,
> though longer timeouts are possible. "
>
>
>
> This seems a very unreliable method of timing the key destruction. Also
> what happens if you can only obtain 50% of the key?
>
>
> It's clever, but there's still work to be done.
>
> On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 1:06 AM, Rick Moynihan 
<rick.moynihan at gmail.com>wrote:
> > 2009/8/13 Robert Ladyman <it at file-away.co.uk>:
> > > Interesting approach.
> > >
> > > http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8197449.stm
> >
> > It's pretty awesome isn't it?  I ran into it sometime last week.
> >
> > Not sure how practical it is, but you can find more details on
> > achieving the previously impossible here:
> >
> > http://vanish.cs.washington.edu/
> >
> > R.
> >
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-- 

Robert Ladyman
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