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Crypto Guru David Chaum's Private Communications Network Comes With a Backdoor (softpedia.com)

Posted by timothy on from the perfect-for-your-carnivore-word-salad dept.

An anonymous reader writes: David Chaum, father of many encryption protocols, has revealed a new anonymity network concept called PrivaTegrity. Chaum, on who's work the Onion protocol was based, created a new encryption protocol that works as fast as I2P and the Onion-Tor combo, but also has better encryption. The only downside, according to an interview, is that he built a backdoor into the darn thing, just to please governments. He says that he's not going to use the backdoor unless to unmask crime on the Dark Web. Here's the research paper (if you can understand anything of it).

2 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. two thoughts... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    1. Is anyone going to trust something with a backdoor?

    2. who's ?

  2. Re:A secure backdooor? by Skewray · · Score: 4, Informative

    Is he claiming he found a way to safely have backdoored communications?

    Not sure what "safely backdoored" means. The system is spread out amongst many different countries in such a way that many different governments must agree to use the back door. If the USA, the Netherlands, and Russia can agree, for example, then it is probably criminal investigation and not spying going on. I reviewed many of the early drafts of this paper. It's pretty cool.