175 lines
7.5 KiB
HTML
175 lines
7.5 KiB
HTML
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<!DOCTYPE html>
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<html lang="en"><head>
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<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
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<style>
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p.center {
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text-align:center;
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}
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</style><title>The Cypherpunk Program</title></head><body>
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<p><a href="./"> To Home page</a> </p>
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<h1>The Cypherpunk Program</h1><p>
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Timothy C. May summarized the plan as</p>
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<blockquote><p>
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“Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, anonymous
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networks, digital pseudonyms, zero knowledge,
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reputations, information markets, black markets,
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collapse of government. </p></blockquote><p>
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Which is intentionally obscure. The plan is to strike
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at the state from the jungle of complexity, to strike at
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the state from beyond the state’s intellectual and
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temporal horizons. The evil minions of the state will
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not be coming after cypherpunks, because they will not
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understand what cypherpunks are doing, and because when
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things start going bad for them the will not be able to
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link cause and effect. </p><p>
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Cryptography alone is insufficient to implement
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crypto-anarchy. Correct understanding and
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implementation of cryptography has proven to be hard, as
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numerous embarrassing failures have demonstrated, but
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correct understanding and implementation of cryptography
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turned out to be only the beginning of what was
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needed. </p><p>
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Often secure cryptographic algorithms have been used to
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construct insecure cryptographic protocols, as for
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example the wifi protocol WPA personal, but worse than
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that, correct cryptographic protocols, such as SSL, have
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resulted in insecure behavior, because the protocol flow
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failed to fit the user’s task flow. </p><p>
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Successfully designing such systems requires a whole
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system viewpoint – cryptographic protocols <em>and</em>
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user interface <em>and</em> business models <em>and</em>
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accounting principles <em>and</em> economic understanding
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<em>and</em> understanding of computer mediated social
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networking. </p><p>
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The cypherpunk movement collapsed in the realization that
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the problem was harder than it seemed, that mere
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cryptography was insufficient. </p><p>
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The cypherpunk movement produced a lot of cryptographic
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tools, among them by own Crypto Kong, only to realize
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that no one wanted <em>cryptographic</em> tools. To
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use a <em>cryptographic</em> tool, you have to
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understand and think about what it is doing, understand
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and think about the cryptographic primitives involved
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every time you use it. Unfortunately, even committees
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of experts tend to screw up when they attempt to
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specify correct use of cryptographic primitives. For
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example the Wifi consortium got it badly wrong, then
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having discovered their error as large numbers of
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people started freeloading on other people’s wifi,
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proceeded to get it wrong again. Then they yet
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another try, and proceeded to get it wrong all over
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again. The latest incarnation of Wifi, as I write this,
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is WPA personal which is vulnerable to offline
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dictionary attack, an attack that has been well known,
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well understood, and the solutions to it well known for
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a very long time. Similarly for DNSSEC, and IPSEC,
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where time after time they got the cryptography correct,
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unlike Wifi, but managed every time to produce non
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solutions that no one could use or would use. </p><p>
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No way can end users be expected to burden themselves
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with such a task, when the experts fail over and over.
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Rather, cryptography needs to be embedded invisibly in
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tools that do user tasks, and make those tasks secure
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without the end user ever thinking about cryptography.
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SSH is the best example of a tool that works like this.
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You never see a dialog box that relates to cryptographic
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matters. It is just secure. It acts the way people
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expect it to act, and they don’t need to think about
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the messy details of how it ensures that hostile
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adversaries cannot meddle and make things fail in
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unexpected ways. Similarly, Skype’s encryption is
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invisibly embodied in a utility that people use to
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communicate with each other, and no one should ever be
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aware of it. </p><p>
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If people use secure tools to mediate cooperation, and
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the storage and creation of value, to do business, then
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those tools will not only be secure against ordinary
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criminals, but against governments – whereupon it becomes
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hard for governments to collect taxes or regulate business,
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hard for governments to intrude themselves in honest
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peaceful activities. </p><p>
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As soon as we produced the first not very satisfactory
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versions of such tools, and early adopters came to use
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them, we hit the second problem. The cypherpunk
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program requires heavy reliance on value, exchange, and
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promises to pay and deliver being computer mediated.
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But computers are extremely insecure. One’s
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computer is apt to come under the control of hostile
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criminals. The computer virus and Trojan problem
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makes it impractical to keep large amounts of value on
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a computer. Similarly, the phishing problem makes it
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difficult to have internet mediate relationships of
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economic value. The anonymity that gives protection
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against governments makes it alarmingly easy for people
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to pretend to be what they are not. And then
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we discovered that net centric anonymous or weakly
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nymous money was violently unpopular because of
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criminals flocking to it, provoking governments to shut
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it down. </p><p>
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And so, the cypherpunk movement collapsed. The remaining cypherpunks patiently
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studied solutions to these problems, and, by and large,
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solutions have been discovered, though these solutions
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are not yet implemented, or the implementations are
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not yet widely adopted, perhaps not yet ready for
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wide adoption. </p><p>
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The problems that shut down the cypherpunk movement are
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</p><ol><li>Cryptography is hard, cryptographic protocols
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that actually work are harder, and embedding those
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protocols invisibly in utilities that do useful things
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without the end user needing to know or think about
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cryptography considerably harder still: To solve this we
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need <a href="replacing_TCP.html">higher level tools
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which automatically apply known sound protocols to the
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particular case</a>, so that good cryptography can be a
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routine and invisible part of good applications, without
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requiring as much thought as it now does.</li>
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<li>Computer insecurity, Trojans and malware: To
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solve this, we need to restrict programs using the
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<a href="./safe_operating_system.html">powerbox software
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pattern</a></li>
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<li>Phishing</li>
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<li>Violently unpopular criminal misuse of net centered
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money</li> </ol><p>
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Few people use encryption technology today, because few
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people have real need of it. </p><p>
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Few people have real need of it, because there is no
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reasonably liquid net money. People are not making, spending,
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transferring, and promising, money through the net, so they
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have little need to encrypt their messages or care for the
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reputation of their nyms. </p><p>
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And that is the big remaining battle and design issue: <a
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href="net_money.html">net money</a> though even if we
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designed and deployed a satisfactory net money, it would not
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come to be widely used for large value transactions until
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a <a href="safe_operating_sytem.html">secure operating
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system</a> is created and deployed, it can still be created
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and deployed for low value transactions such as file
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sharing and spam control – one message client would charge
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a very small amount to accept messages from people not one one’s white
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list. The fee would be refunded if one does not classify
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the message as spam.</p>
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</body></html>
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