[Freedombox-discuss] Santiago Verifying Requests

[Nick M. Daly]

Hi folks, just wanted to give a quick update on the progress here.  I've
started the process of making Santiago encrypt and sign service request
messages.  I'm not completely sure the process is right though, it seems
like I'm requiring the system to do unnecessary work and that shortcuts
I'm not seeing should be available.

If you're interested in giving some feedback on the design, look at
simple_santiago.py's unpack_request method.  The basic idea is that we
want A and B to communicate privately through any number of
intermediaries (proxies), who they don't necessarily trust, but who
trust one another.

1. A encrypts its message to B.

2. To allow proxies to deliver the message, they need to know who the
   destination is, so A marks B as the message's destination and signs
   that message, so it can't be tampered with during transit.

3. Each proxy signs the message for transit to the next proxy, stripping
   off any previous signature, and rejecting any invalid or untrusted
   signatures.

Please let me know if you can think of any ways to simplify this, or if
I should go with another design, generally.

If you want a "working" Santiago, check out the previous commits [1].
Things are kinda torn up right now and *will not work*.

Nick

0: http://www.saltycrane.com/blog/2011/10/python-gnupg-gpg-example/

1: https://github.com/NickDaly/Plinth/commit/a4c0d1619d02cfc4150863acb5f02803c88ff4c1
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