[Masthead] [] [] [[] [Navigation bar] [BaCreating Anonymous Sites That Can't [Intel Pentium OverDrive processor with MMX technology] Be Revoked [Stocks] [Image] by Michael Stutz [technology] 12:05pm 5.Aug.97.PDT Web sites, having a physical, traceable TECHNOLOGY location, are always subject to Today's Headlines [Search] censorship. In such attacks, a government or other localized entity [WIRED magazine] orders the removal of - or even Iomega Primes physically raids - those sites which Bite-Sized host non-approved content within its Storage Solution sovereign borders; these sites are often forced to "unpublish" or Creating destroy such information. Anonymous Sites That Can't Be Now, a means of creating anonymous, Revoked unrevokable Web sites has been developed. Originally proposed in Microsoft theory by UK cryptologist Ross Reportedly Anderson, the Eternity Server is Entering Net being implemented by a band of Search Biz cypherpunks including Adam Back, a research fellow at Exeter Macromedia University. Offers Dynamic HTML Helper The idea is simple. Web content - even entire sites - can be posted to NCR Licenses Usenet in such a way that it can be Solaris easily retrieved. Testimony Gets Usenet's discussion forums are Animated distributed across thousands of news servers around the world. This, it Eword: Doctor turns out, makes for a perfect, Roboto anonymous digital repository: "No one knows who's reading it," said Outta Beta: Back. "They can't find all Eternity Community Servers from some centralized list. Building Blocks It's decentralized, unlike a mailing list, where there is a central node which can be taken out." [Intel Pentium OverDrive processor with MMX technology] [Image] The mechanics of document submission are as follows: Eternity Service recognizes its own fictitious top-level domain, .eternity. From there, a Web document is given its own virtual URL, and the subject line of the message becomes a unique mathematical representation of that virtual URL, from which the document can be retrieved using search techniques. Furthermore, the message is encrypted so that knowledge of this URL is necessary for decryption. Once posted to Usenet, the document will be viewable in perpetuity and can be reconstructed in a Web browser by any Eternity Server program, which simply decodes the .eternity URL into its equivalent Usenet message, then fetches, decrypts, and displays it. Eternity supports digital signatures to maintain author anonymity, allowing for unconditional free speech. Mike Duvos, a Seattle-area computer-software consultant, is an Eternity Service user. He sees this as part of Usenet's ongoing evolution, just as it previously changed from a text-only medium to include binary files as well. "Establishing a convention for the posting of Web content to Usenet, employing modern encryption and authentication tools, and permitting transparent browsing of that content, is just another step in the same direction," he said. While still fresh out of beta, the technique shows a great deal of promise as a foil to conventional means of censorship. "The attention gathered by censoring an Eternity Server will ensure that lots of other servers start up," said Back. "It will generate a feeding frenzy of new servers springing up," he said, assisting free speech from here - to Eternity. Find related stories from the Web's top news sites with NewBot [Bac[Navigation strip] Feedback: Let us know how we're doing. Tips: Have a story or tip for Wired News? Send it. Copyright © 1993-97 Wired Ventures Inc. and affiliated companies. [HotWired and HotBot]ll rights reserved.