On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 05:55:01 -0400, Mike Meyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote or quoted :
>Virus writers will love the ability to >change peoples address books remotely. Since this is just a broad brush view, I find it odd you can predict just what bugs there will be in the early implementations. You sound almost as if you were the author of the current system and feel personally attacked by others looking for ways to improve it. In my scheme, every message is digitally signed, even a change of address message. Surely for a virus to send out a digitally signed change of address message is more difficult than sending out an unsigned one, which they can do today. You have two problems you want to avoid: 1. the practical problem: failure to inform your correspondents, not just your address list, of your new address (at least the ones you don't consider spam or pests). 2. the potential problem: rogue software sending out fake change of address notices. In my scheme, The receiver of the change of address message ignores it unless it is properly signed. Surely that is a more secure system than we have today and that handles (1) without effort. At worst, a very clever virus could change the one address book entry, the one for this computer, in other's machines. It could not generally corrupt other machines. -- Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green. http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list