Fedora 11: Switching to single user mode (runlevel 1) -- Hey g.

Tim ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au
Sun Jul 12 03:10:50 UTC 2009


On Sat, 2009-07-11 at 22:49 -0400, David wrote:
> Did I understand correctly that 'g' thinks that since he 'signs' his
> emails to this list with an unpublished key that no one from this
> list, for example me, can email him directly? Directly to his email
> address instead of to the list?

That's not what I understood, more like the common belief that:

The general idea is that /real person/ signs their mail, so everyone
else knows that the real person was the one who sent certain messages.
But /some forger/ can't send their forged mail signed with the same
signature, and everyone can check whether a post came from the real
person or the forger.

However, it falls apart for various reasons:

The signature doesn't really prove much, if anything.  Other than,
perhaps, that a message hasn't been altered in transit by another
person.

The forger can create a signature, upload that to a key server, and fool
some people.

The real person can send unsigned mail, and claim that it wasn't them
that sent it, because it wasn't signed.  (An old trick for getting away
with sending nasty mail.)

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.  I
read messages from the public lists.






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