-
How GnuPG Works
I first used GnuPG 21 years ago, to securely communicate from Germany with my US-based girlfriend at the time (who became my wife of by now 17 years). That was before the web (I discovered it in December 1993), and connectivity was over a modem, “somewhere” in the company that paid my salary. This modem…
-
Raspberry PI Pool controller upgrade
My Raspberry PI-based pool controller has been running our pool pumps faithfully for the past 18 months. Every morning, it switches the two pumps on (first one, then the other), and runs them for a few hours (switching them off in reverse sequence). It is really nice to sit out on the deck, go to…
-
Is there anything about identity on the internet that’s not broken?
We know that usernames and passwords are broken, password resets are, SSL certificates, hacks like certificate pinning etc. and many other things. Apparently even domain name ownership proof is just as broken: there seems to be no method to authoritatively determine whether somebody who claims to own a domain actually does. If somebody came to…
-
Digital signatures on JSON payloads — let’s call it ‘jsonsig’
I’m finding myself wanting to digitally sign JSON content, keeping the signature and metadata inside the JSON file, and I’m largely coming up empty looking for a solution that exists already. I only found: Camlistore: it signs JSON documents but creates an “outer wrapper”. It’s also a bit too specific to Camlistore for my needs.…
-
Making relationships verifiable
(This is more of a note to myself, but you might find it interesting anyway) Let’s say there are two people, M and D, who supposedly are mother and daughter, i.e. they are supposedly in the relationship “is parent of”. If I come across a piece of information that expresses “M.isParentOf.D”, should I believe it?…