Re: Hide UID From Public Key Server By Poison Your Key?

[Robert J. Hansen]

> Just an idea, it might be more efficient if I just
> commit online suicide (throw away my current
> identity).

I should also add: in addition to being a dick move, this approach
doesn't work.  It's genuinely counterproductive.

If I were to see a certificate with a hundred different UIDs, I'd
immediately start digging around.  This is not what you want: in the
course of poisoning your cert you've made it odd, unusual, and interesting.

Next thing I'd do would be to start scouring the internet for these
usernames.  Most would simply not have any trail associated with them
whatsoever: I'd email them and get bounce messages to confirm it.  I've
now largely cured your attempt at poisoning your cert.  I'm down to a
handful of user IDs.

One of them will have a very carefully-curated digital trail.  The
others will not.  Congratulations: I've just found the identity you want
to keep secret.  Now I know there's some connection between this
identity and the small number of user IDs that are left after depoisoning.

Now it's just a matter of time until I figure out who you are and what
fake identity you're using... and here's the rub: until I saw over 100
UIDs on your cert, I wouldn't have given a damn and wouldn't have bothered.

The worst thing you can do in your situation is to draw attention to
your mistake.  Your poisoning attempt is genuinely counterproductive.
You're making yourself visible.

I cannot advise against this course of action strongly enough.  Burning
your current fake identity is probably far safer and more effective.

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Re: Hide UID From Public Key Server By Poison Your Key?

[Jason Lawrence]

> Uh -- how? 

Because I have associate not only my real name,
but also my working email, and it is listed in my
company's home page. If people are trying to
follow you, they are not going with presumption of
innocence, and too many things can help them
justify their doubt -- such as your Timezone,
language style, grammar and spell error. To make
is worse, I was working in a very small industry
and there is only 3 company provide such service,
and I talked a lot about it in the past with my
online identity.

> This is a total dick move. Don't do this. You'll 
> make yourself a lot of enemies

I do not have to pick any real name, at least not
from any pgp user. I can just use a fake name
generator, put those names under my company's
domain, or just add my colleague's email to it --
they will never notice. Even if they do, they can
only see their UID under a revoked key, and it
looks just like other ancient garbage keys in the
server. I will try to make it as harmless as
possible. 

The only problem is how the pgp key server 
handles 2 public keys with duplicated
timestamp. If I can not insert some fake UIDs
before my real one, the whole thing will be 
pointless.
 

Sent: Monday, January 15, 2018 at 3:13 PM
From: "Robert J. Hansen" <r...@sixdemonbag.org>
To: gnupg-users@gnupg.org
Subject: Re: Hide UID From Public Key Server By Poison Your Key?

> Let's say, you have accidentally associated your
> real name to the key under your online name and
> upload it to public key server, which allows
> anyone to connect your online identity to the
> person in real life.

Uh -- how?

There is no mechanism in the keyserver to do this. That's why you have
to validate certificates you receive from the keyserver. The fact
there's a UID named "Robert J. Hansen <r...@sixdemonbag.org>" on key
0xB44427C7 provides you with precisely *zero* evidence that I'm Rob
Hansen or that Rob Hansen even exists. For all you know my name is
Maurice Micklethorpe.

> Since you can never remove
> anything from the public key server, You are
> wondering if you can add something to it -- for
> example, add another 100 of UIDs with other
> people's real name and emails so people can not
> find out which one is yours, and append another
> 100 of digital signature so people get tired
> before figure out which one is from valid user.

I rarely use language like this, but this time I think it's warranted:

This is a total dick move. Don't do this. You'll make yourself a lot
of enemies, and if you pick the wrong real names and emails, some of
those people are pretty damn good at figuring out what's going on.

Don't put real names and emails belonging to other people on your cert.
It's *rude*. If someone goes looking for "Robert J. Hansen
<r...@sixdemonbag.org>" I want them to see one cert is newest and I want
them to use that one. If you go about putting my name and email address
on your cert, I'm going to get cross.

Again: this is a total dick move. Don't do this.

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Remove public key from keyserver (was: Re: Hide UID From Public Key Server By Poison Your Key?)

[Leo Gaspard]

On 01/15/2018 08:13 AM, Robert J. Hansen wrote:>> Since you can never remove
>> anything from the public key server, You are
>> wondering if you can add something to it -- for
>> example, add another 100 of UIDs with other
>> people's real name and emails so people can not
>> find out which one is yours, and append another
>> 100 of digital signature so people get tired
>> before figure out which one is from valid user.
> 
> I rarely use language like this, but this time I think it's warranted:
> 
> This is a total dick move.  Don't do this.  You'll make yourself a lot
> of enemies, and if you pick the wrong real names and emails, some of
> those people are pretty damn good at figuring out what's going on.
> 
> Don't put real names and emails belonging to other people on your cert.
> It's *rude*.  If someone goes looking for "Robert J. Hansen
> " I want them to see one cert is newest and I want
> them to use that one.  If you go about putting my name and email address
> on your cert, I'm going to get cross.
> 
> Again: this is a total dick move.  Don't do this.

That said, it raises the interesting question of revocation of data on
keyservers (and the associated legal issues in operating keyservers, as
the operator is supposed to comply with requests to remove
personally-identifiable information from it).

I was just thinking, would it be possible to have a tag (a UID with
special meaning, like “please-remove...@srs-keyservers.net”?) for which
the signature would be verified by the keyserver, and that would cause
it to drop everything from its storage apart from this tag? This way the
“please remove me” tag would just naturally propagate across keyservers,
and all up-to-date-enough keyservers will drop all the data associated
with the key except the tag and the master public key (basically, the
strict minimum to check the said tag).

That said I guess ideas like this have already likely been discussed before?

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Re: Hide UID From Public Key Server By Poison Your Key?

[Robert J. Hansen]

> Let's say, you have accidentally associated your
> real name to the key under your online name and
> upload it to public key server, which allows
> anyone to connect your online identity to the
> person in real life.

Uh -- how?

There is no mechanism in the keyserver to do this.  That's why you have
to validate certificates you receive from the keyserver.  The fact
there's a UID named "Robert J. Hansen " on key
0xB44427C7 provides you with precisely *zero* evidence that I'm Rob
Hansen or that Rob Hansen even exists.  For all you know my name is
Maurice Micklethorpe.

> Since you can never remove
> anything from the public key server, You are
> wondering if you can add something to it -- for
> example, add another 100 of UIDs with other
> people's real name and emails so people can not
> find out which one is yours, and append another
> 100 of digital signature so people get tired
> before figure out which one is from valid user.

I rarely use language like this, but this time I think it's warranted:

This is a total dick move.  Don't do this.  You'll make yourself a lot
of enemies, and if you pick the wrong real names and emails, some of
those people are pretty damn good at figuring out what's going on.

Don't put real names and emails belonging to other people on your cert.
It's *rude*.  If someone goes looking for "Robert J. Hansen
" I want them to see one cert is newest and I want
them to use that one.  If you go about putting my name and email address
on your cert, I'm going to get cross.

Again: this is a total dick move.  Don't do this.

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