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

[Nicholas Walker]

well, you sort of can, in multiples of 8 hours.

The vuse network purges the hashes after the 8 hour limit has been reached,
and they have implemented a refresh module into vanish to re-up the hashes.

still, it relies on p2p networks, and all of your hash may not be available.

On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Robert Ladyman <it at file-away.co.uk> wrote:

>
> 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.
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > dundee GNU/Linux Users Group mailing list
> > > dundee at lists.lug.org.uk  http://dundeelug.org.uk
> > > https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dundee
> > > Chat on IRC, #tlug on irc.lug.org.uk
>
> --
>
> Robert Ladyman
> File-Away Limited, 32 Church Street, Newtyle
> Perthshire, PH12 8TZ SCOTLAND
> Registered in Scotland, Company Number SC222086
> Tel: +44 (0) 1828 898 158
> Mobile: +44 (0) 7732 771 649
> http://www.file-away.co.uk
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> dundee GNU/Linux Users Group mailing list
> dundee at lists.lug.org.uk  http://dundeelug.org.uk
> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dundee
> Chat on IRC, #tlug on irc.lug.org.uk
>



-- 


Nick Walker
Vice President : The Linux Society
UAD Ethical Hacker
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/dundee/attachments/20090814/29cfcda0/attachment.htm