PGP-Domo...

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On another mailing-list, there has been a lengthy discussion going
on about encrypting the list-traffic or not.
Although I personally agree, that encrypting a public mailing list
is kind of useless I would like to know from a technical
perspective if PGPdomo supports _both_ PGP and plain-text
simultaneously on the same mailing list (if no public key
available, send plain-text, otherwise encrypt).
Also, considering the time it takes to encrypt/sign a message for
each individual user (assuming they use pgp), isn't that too much
overhead for the list-server, when we deal with a few hundred
people and maybe traffic like on cypherpunks?

Any experiences from PGP-Domo users/admins would be greatly
appreciated.

Ciao

Harka

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___ Blue Wave/386 v2.30 [NR]

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If encryption is outlawed, only outlaws will have encryption...

harka@nycmetro.com writes:

> On another mailing-list, there has been a lengthy discussion going
> on about encrypting the list-traffic or not.
> Although I personally agree, that encrypting a public mailing list
> is kind of useless I would like to know from a technical
> perspective if PGPdomo supports _both_ PGP and plain-text
> simultaneously on the same mailing list (if no public key
> available, send plain-text, otherwise encrypt).
> Also, considering the time it takes to encrypt/sign a message for
> each individual user (assuming they use pgp), isn't that too much
> overhead for the list-server, when we deal with a few hundred
> people and maybe traffic like on cypherpunks?

It depends a lot on the traffic. If it's 100 messages a day, then it's
a few hundred times the traffic on a list with a couple of messages a week.
It also depends on the kind of box you're running it on (386? Sparc 20?).
So, if I were looking to cut down on the CPU time required and the traffic,
I'd do this:

1. ecnrypt with the keys of every recipient to send out one encrypted
messages that every recipient can decrypt.

2. consider using a daily digest (or digest every few hours).

Anyway, if you have more than a dozen people on the mailing list whom
you don't know personally, you should *assume* that at least one of them
is a narc and/or an asshole who'll decrypt it and pass it on to others.

---

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

In <TCPSMTP.17.4.3.0.48.36.2780269260.1593210@nycmetro.com>, on 04/02/97 at
11:48 PM,
   harka@nycmetro.com said:


>On another mailing-list, there has been a lengthy discussion going on
>about encrypting the list-traffic or not.
>Although I personally agree, that encrypting a public mailing list is kind
>of useless I would like to know from a technical
>perspective if PGPdomo supports _both_ PGP and plain-text
>simultaneously on the same mailing list (if no public key
>available, send plain-text, otherwise encrypt).
>Also, considering the time it takes to encrypt/sign a message for each
>individual user (assuming they use pgp), isn't that too much overhead for
>the list-server, when we deal with a few hundred people and maybe traffic
>like on cypherpunks?

>Any experiences from PGP-Domo users/admins would be greatly
>appreciated.

I haven't used PGP-Domo but I have run a PGP mailing list using my own
software for OS/2.

You can cut down on some of the overhead by encrypting the message with
multiple keys but this increases messages size. If you have a large # of
subscribers you may wish to break up your encryption into blocks, say 25
keys per message. I think it will depend on your system on how may
subscribers & messages you could handle on a daily basis. Say a user base
of 1000 subscribers with 100 messages/day that's 100,000 encryptions per
day. While I think this would be doable on a PC you would have some
serrious lag. For a large subscription base I would go to a digest format.
This would cut down those 100 messages to say 5-10 digests. This would get
you to 5-10,000 encryptions which would be much more doable.

On the mailing list that I am running I only have 4-5 messages a day with a
user base of ~130 so volume has not been a problem. :)



-- 
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William H. Geiger III  http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii
Geiger Consulting    Cooking With Warp 4.0

Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail.
                          
Finger whgiii@amaranth.com for PGP Key and other info
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