131–140 of 149 posts
The only problem I have with this kind of tools/experiments is that you can begin to use it then in one or two years the domain expires and everything is over
So Cloudflare suggests there are two ways of doing timelock encryption: you can rely on some proxy for the passage of time, such as repeated hashing; or you can rely on one or more trusted agents. I don't think the 'proxy' approach is timelock encryption, because it doesn't actually rely on the passage of time. Cloudflare is relying on a network of trusted agents that 'tick' at a predictable rate. I think I wouldn't…
So, in a sense, in my opinion, if you want to encrypt a message and send it to someone and make it timelocked without a third-party, you might as well just keep the message secret until the desired amount of time has passed and just give it to him.
If being crackable during the time period is a concern, why not just use OTP (one-time pad, not his evil twin) and create XORed multiple keys to be shared with peers, and then use all of the distributed keys to reveal the message after some time had passed?
Some people do timelock encryption by using weak cryptography that's expected to be broken in a planned amount of time, but this project isn't doing that. It uses modern cryptography to encrypt some data to a set of public keys so that 18 of 22 nodes have to cooperate to decrypt it. Anything encrypted with modern cryptography isn't expected to be crackable in under millions of years. Their design has the benefit over…
Here's a way to encrypt something with an actual timelock, which works because physics. More specifically, it works because there is a maximum speed that information can travel through space: the speed of light. Step 1: Generate a large number of named public/private keypairs and put the private keys on a spacecraft. Also give the spacecraft a communication system and a long-lived RTG (an energy source getting its en…
If I want my secret exposed in 20 years, I will need to wrap it in 18,000 layers of encryption, and then start the decryption process immediately.
The duration of one decryption step depends on the distance to the spaceship; it would be difficult (but not impossible?) to rely on a spaceship whose distance is always changing. It needs to be somewhere faraway, and also to be somewhere that's always going to be roughly the same distance away. A moon of Neptune is a reasonable candidate.
Here's a way to encrypt something with an actual timelock, which works because physics. More specifically, it works because there is a maximum speed that information can travel through space: the speed of light. Step 1: Generate a large number of named public/private keypairs and put the private keys on a spacecraft. Also give the spacecraft a communication system and a long-lived RTG (an energy source getting its en…
> Inspired by the TOR network. Because it has such high delays? Basically revealing the information which the onion service or exit node encrypted for you only after, potentially, a few trips around the globe? That makes me think this can be achieved without spacecraft, by just having geographically distributed private keys (even just a few kilometers; you just need the light delays to dominate over processing delays…
Neptune is about 30AU from the Sun. The Earth's distance from Neptune will presumably vary somewhere between 28AU and 32AU. Light travels 1AU in about 8 minutes, 28AU in about 224 minutes, 30AU in about 240 minutes, and 32AU in about 256 minutes. Depending on your use-case, that's not a particularly wild variation.
So Cloudflare suggests there are two ways of doing timelock encryption: you can rely on some proxy for the passage of time, such as repeated hashing; or you can rely on one or more trusted agents. I don't think the 'proxy' approach is timelock encryption, because it doesn't actually rely on the passage of time. Cloudflare is relying on a network of trusted agents that 'tick' at a predictable rate. I think I wouldn't…
It's funny just thinking about it. Because if you are not depending on a third-party, then you are depending on yourself only. Which means that once you encrypt something hoping that you won't be able to decrypt for some amount of time, you accept that changing of the time has something to do with the decryption of your encrypted message. Since you can certainly know how much of time should be pass, you can't keep se…
There's no point in encrypting a secret to protect it from my own eyes; I already know the secret.
Here's a way to encrypt something with an actual timelock, which works because physics. More specifically, it works because there is a maximum speed that information can travel through space: the speed of light. Step 1: Generate a large number of named public/private keypairs and put the private keys on a spacecraft. Also give the spacecraft a communication system and a long-lived RTG (an energy source getting its en…
> Generate a large number of named public/private keypairs and put the private keys on a spacecraft I suppose, more practically, you could just put the private key in an envelope and bury it deep in a shipping container with a destination across the ocean. While in transit it's pretty damn hard to get to it.
If you want your secret to last for decades, a shipping container is too vulnerable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Generate a large number of named public/private keypairs and put the private keys on a spacecraft I suppose, more practically, you could just put the private key in an envelope and bury it deep in a shipping container with a destination across the ocean. While in transit it's pretty damn hard to get to it.
There are a few geocaching approaches: Sunken chest / mysterious treasure map Beacon of high gamma radiation / undesirable to approach for many half lives USB key in Jimmy Hoffas pocket
First find Jimmy (embedded in concrete?). Then notice that there's no time element; Jimmy's USB key will be found when Jimmy's found, which might be tomorrow or it might be never. Then learn that he disappeared long before USB keys were invented.
I realize the suggestion was light-hearted!
On another note, I think something like this should come with some kind of zero knowledge proof of the future encrypted thing being what it is claimed to be, so that one doesn't have to wait for a long time just for the secret to encrypt into nothing.
That's a good point. Not sure how to do that right now
It’s an interesting property of the universe that there’s no way to measure time directly. It clearly exists, yet all you can measure is change of things besides time. Time lock puzzles take variable time depending on hardware. You can’t really set an accurate specific release time. Any change in the universe that a computer can detect is just another spoofable input. Blockchain tries to solve essentially the same pr…
Digital cryptography will always being a cat and mouse. DES, RSA, Elliptic curve... With intro of quantum computing, it will just fasten up the pace. Some government has start experimenting with quantum entanglement (https://apnews.com/article/china-google-justice-department-6...)
It is all about your threat model. Even that I'm sure someday some smart guy will also figure out how to figure out how to beat that.