Arranging an Anonymous Rendezvous

Architecture and Background

Description from DEF CON 9 Speaker’s Page: Arranging an Anonymous Rendezvous: Privacy Protection for Internet Servers As the Internet grows in popularity around the world, we are beginning to see clashes between individuals and governments from different cultural backgrounds. Corporations, organizations, and legislatures are using local laws in order to enforce their wishes on others worldwide.

Vulnerability Analysis

Much work has been put into producing privacy-enhancing technologies that protect clients of online interactive Internet services. In this talk, we present the _rendezvous server_, a primitive which allows the transformation of any such technology into one which can equally protect the providers of those services.

Exploitation and Demonstrations

It is our hope that being able to provide privacy for providers of online services, such as mailing lists, discussion groups, web sites, file servers, and chat rooms, they will be less susceptible to attack, and so will help prevent the Internet from becoming a place where the powerful can control the availability of content worldwide. Ian Goldberg is Chief Scientist and Head Cypherpunk of Zero-Knowledge Systems, a Canadian company producing Internet privacy software for consumers.

Remediation and Defensive Strategies

Having recently received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, Ian is recognized internationally as one of the leading cryptographers and cypherpunks. In addition to developing many of the leading network software titles for the Palm Pilot, Ian is known for his part in cracking the first RSA Secret Key Challenge in three and a half hours, for breaking Netscape's implementation of the encryption system SSL, for breaking the cryptography in the GSM cellular phone standard, and for throwing lots of parties.