Anonymous Credit

[Richard Clayton]

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In article <20010901175951.A26979@noc.untraceable.net>, Andrew Brown
<atatat@atatdot.net> writes

>just for fun, let's suppose that your anonymous publication was a fine
>description of how to factor really large numbers in trivial time (and
>you really don't want every large intelligence agency and their
>bastard children coming after you).
>
>how would you sign that? 

with an elliptic curve :)

> after all, your paper would effectively be a
>description of how to sign anything with anyone's public key.

not all crypto is the same crypto!

You could also generate a large random number and publish the hash of
that concatenated with the message ... the ability to display the random
number would be a strong indication of authorship.

People interested in schemes for publishing a sequence of messages in
such a way as to show linkage between them might consider the "Guy
Fawkes Protocol" [a suitable scheme for Guy Fawkes to claim
responsibility for his groups actions without risking people forging
claims in his name]. It's described in this (PDF) paper:

        http://www.ftp.cl.cam.ac.uk/ftp/users/rja14/fawkes.pdf

- -- 
richard @ highwayman . com                       "Nothing seems the same
                          Still you never see the change from day to day
                                And no-one notices the customs slip away"

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