On Fri, May 04, 2001 at 12:29:20AM -0400, Tavin Cole wrote:
> On Thu, May 03, 2001 at 11:03:55PM -0500, Scott G. Miller wrote:
> > On Thu, May 03, 2001 at 10:41:30PM -0400, Tavin Cole wrote:
> > > Currently the full structure of an unencrypted Freenet document
> > > looks like this:
> > > 
> > > 2 bytes:   crypto key length
> > > X bytes:   crypto key, where X == crypto key length
> > > remainder: actual file data
> > > 
> > > This allows the requesting client to check that it in fact has the
> > > correct decryption key, although the java clients don't actually
> > > do this.
> > > 
> > It should.  The whole point here wsa to have a mechanism in place to force
> > encryption of files.
> 
> Yea, the code's commented out - ??
It shouldn't be. 

> > > the crypto key at the beginning of the document makes things
> > > unnecessarily difficult.
> > Why?
> 
> Well, part of it is that having to strip off those few bytes tends to
> require a whole extra filtering stream wrapped in, in the client code
> I am working on (as I have to set up a passive layering of output
> streams instead of an active layering of input streams).  Also, I
> need to know the metadata length in order to set up these streams,
> but I need them set up to read the metadata length :)
Thats a decent point.

> Then consider FCP where you want to return the MetadataLength in the
> DataFound response, but you don't know it until the first DataChunk.
Also good.

> Of course I can deal with all this, but it will complicate our reference
> code in odd ways, and I expect would be difficult to handle in any
> language.
> 
> > And why expose any more information to the node than it needs?
> 
> I agree.  I was expecting that it would be sufficient to encrypt the
> items in the storables.  There's little difference between that and
> having it at the beginning of the trailing field.  Is there a subtle
> cryptographic vulnerability, even if you go as far as lumping it
> under Storable.Client-data?
> 
I don't think so, except for perhaps making a known-plaintext attack
easier, but not really, since that length would have gone in the document
itself.

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