Signing messages

Does anyone know if/how it is possible to use signed messages on Usenet?
Would PGP work? Is it worth looking into?

Jon

"Agent Blue" wrote in message
...
"Jon Berndt" wrote in
:

Does anyone know if/how it is possible to use signed messages on
Usenet?

Yes.

Would PGP work?

Yes.

Is it worth looking into?

That's up to you. If you use PGP then those wanting to verify your
signature must also use PGP. Personally, I don't see a need for PGP in
Usenet. If you are referring to all the faked posts from certain
individuals, then I suppose the "real" individuals can use PGP to sign
their messages, but that's a bit paranoid. After all, is there anyone
here that really believes the faked posts are from the real individuals?

There's another point - why not just check the headers and find the real
posters anyway. That's what I've been doing for the past couple of weeks
now. It takes a bit of time, but works (if it mentions "giglamesh" then
it's fake).
--
Alan Erskine
alanerskine(at)optusnet.com.au
Did John Howard lie to the Australian people?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

In article ,
"Jon Berndt" wrote:

Does anyone know if/how it is possible to use signed messages on Usenet?
Would PGP work? Is it worth looking into?

Jon



Yes. ;-)

In response to the other posters' comments about it not being worth it
to sign/verify messages and not being fooled by the forgeries, I think
they're missing at least part of the point. If the forgeries weren't so
obviously bogus, the threat posed by forged posts would be much more
serious. One could drop subtle (yet still damning) disinformation with
the recipient none the wiser. It's that sort of insidious, hard to
detect identity forging that PGP/GPG really helps prevent.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (Darwin)

iD8DBQE/EXJuqdp7PLv2/BwRAmNGAJ9unrLZoI08mx+neutO9wm8Yu1JVwCfdVin
JWRw1BSB3xw17LTP3kc0IbI=
=sez9
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--
Herb Schaltegger, Esq.
Chief Counsel, Human O-Ring Society
"I was promised flying cars! Where are the flying cars?!"
~ Avery Brooks

On Sun, 13 Jul 2003 09:12:37 GMT, Bruce Palmer
wrote:

Just kill the nasty threads and be done with it. They're a nuisance and
nothing more IMO. Nobody's losing any sleep wondering "Wow! Did
Jon/Alan/Rhonda/etc. really say *THAT*?"

....I did *exactly* that last night. Every one of these bogus threads,
along with every single thread every single Maxson is involved in was
killfiled. Both .shuttle and .history were much more sedate this
morning when I did a header refresh.

It was actually more fun than flaming the scum for a change. Which
should please Beady to no end...


OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

Giganews still hosts Bob Mosley's trashy abuse for
Illuminati Online. Others like 'MondoMor' act like
they've never behaved as bad or worse here toward
me than Mosley.

--
John Thomas Maxson, Retired Engineer (Aerospace)
Author, The Betrayal of Mission 51-L (www.mission51l.com)


MondoMor
wrote in message news:8ReQa.52519$H17.14764@sccrnsc02...
OM wrote:
snip
It was actually more fun than flaming the scum for a change.
Which should please Beady to no end...


Congratulations! You've finally grown up and realized feeding
the trolls doesn't do anything but increase the noise!

In article ,
Jonathan Griffitts wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

In article ,
Herb Schaltegger writes
In article ,
"Jon Berndt" wrote:

Does anyone know if/how it is possible to use signed messages on Usenet?
Would PGP work? Is it worth looking into?

Jon
Yes. ;-)

In response to the other posters' comments about it not being worth it
to sign/verify messages and not being fooled by the forgeries, I think
they're missing at least part of the point. If the forgeries weren't so
obviously bogus, the threat posed by forged posts would be much more
serious. One could drop subtle (yet still damning) disinformation with
the recipient none the wiser. It's that sort of insidious, hard to
detect identity forging that PGP/GPG really helps prevent.

As Herb has demonstrated, It certainly is possible to use PGP signatures
on Usenet. It's not common, but you see it in the computer techie
newsgroups fairly often.

Unfortunately I'm unable to verify Herb's signature block, it shows as
invalid. I believe that digital signatures may not be compatible with
the anti-spam address munging.



FWIW, apparently the infamous forgeries are so easy to recognize that my
standard killfile filters have been zapping them and their threads. If
it weren't for your secondary discussions I wouldn't even know about
this. The same goes for outbreaks of postings by the prominent resident
kooks.

I have killfile patterns set up on most newsgroups to eliminate
excessive crossposting and posting from the common anonymizers. Beyond
that each group gets a hand-tuned list of header rules and specific
posters. It reduces the noise level greatly, and is way less stressful
than arguing about it.
- --
Jonathan Griffitts
AnyWare Engineering Boulder, CO, USA

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGPsdk 2.0.5

iQA/AwUBPxi1BP4FScsoQJc5EQIvwwCfZi3XSDrFd6rxOzoE+WDlWH eKSQ8AoOhQ
hwUtfedaFS38B5Y8I9Xx8+rL
=+JSY
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Your signature verifies just fine; I wonder why mine doesn't? I looked
up my post and it verifies locally okay but the google-archived copy
does not; probably some line-wrapping issues along the way.

--
Herb Schaltegger, Esq.
Chief Counsel, Human O-Ring Society
"I was promised flying cars! Where are the flying cars?!"
~ Avery Brooks