Public Key Cryptography (by alaric)

Last night, I somehow managed to pull off the first ORG key signing event successfully!

We exchanged proofs of identity - the ostensible purpose of the event. And the ORG people spread the word about ORG to everyone who attended (and even at least one random person who came up and asked what we were doing), and we all had good discussions about digital rights and crypto.

One topic that came up was the one us cryptogeeks rarely worry about too much:

Why bother?

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I’ve finally started cabling my house (by alaric)

In our house, the telephone sockets are downstairs, at one end of the building, while my office (where my office telephone and computers sit) is upstairs and at the opposite end of the building.

So to get working quickly amongst the hubbub of moving in, I ran Ethernet and telephone cables from the phone sockets (the ADSL router that provides our Internet connection sits rights by the phone sockets, since the DSL signal quality is so bad anyway I wanted to maximise signal strength by not putting the ADSL router on the end of a cheap telephone extension cable) up to the office. The longest Ethernet cables I had were ten metres long, so I put the core router in the airing cupboard, more or less exactly between the phone sockets and my desk, and also conveniently having a power outlet to run it - then ran a ten-metre cable to it from the ADSL router and another one from my desk.

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More on n2n (by alaric)

I've been discussing n2n with my friends, and one of them raised an interesting point.

He pointed out that since n2n offers access control only at the network level - you need to know the network key to join a network - it works like the Internet of old: once you're in, you're in and fully trusted, and people can't get rid of you; they can just ignore you.

If that's a problem, then you have to do what the Internet had to do - set up local firewalling and access control.

This struck me as an interesting point about the trust model you're using.

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Keysigning party – South Kensington, London, 2nd of June 2008 (by alaric)

I now have a venue for the keysigning party...

If you're interested in building a web of cryptographic trust (or just want to meet some interesting people), come along to Da Vinci's Cafe Bar, Imperial College Union, Beit Quad, Prince Consort Road, South Kensington, London. More detailled directions are available on the web site

Turn up around 7pm - but be there before 8pm, since that's when we'll actually authenticate ourselves to each other and swap key data.

Then an evening of socialising!

Keysigning party – London, 2nd June (by alaric)

I've somehow ended up organising a keysigning party in London on the 2nd of June.

See the page for directions to the venue (it's in South Kensington).

So if you have a PGP keypair (or take part in CACert.org or Thawte's web of trust), come along. If you don't, but are interested in being able to exchange military-grade encrypted or signed messages, then set up GNU Privacy Guard - see their manuals for more details - and create yourself a keypair (your own digital identity) - or several - and bring along your key IDs and fingerprints to have them vouched for and vouch for everyone else's.

I've made myself some MOO cards to hand out my key details on: