Bolivar Shagnasty's Crypto Page Bolivar Shagnasty's Crypto PageVisitor No. since 05-Feb-96
| Contents: | History of Shagnasty | |
| Search Engine Stats for PGP | ||
| Resources | ||
| Algorithms | ||
| Stego | ||
| Individuals | ||
| Old Links | ||
Formerly Chagnaste, an obscure yet secretive French barony. Though little known in their time, the Chagnastes have remained almost unheard of to this day. Despite being a secretive group, they nonetheless managed almost entirely to escape public attention and, paradoxically, the history books. Little record remains of them, though their obscurity is widespread, even worldwide in scope. While many through the ages have had obscurity thrust upon them, the Chagnastes have actively sought it. This page is a tribute to what they are not known to have done, what is unconfirmed, even unsuspected about their accomplishments and what is undiscovered about them as... well... as people. People who are anathema wrapped in enigma yet, strangely, also inscrutable. People whose lives, though unknown, remain undocumented, and whose descendants, though undocumented, remain unknown.
It is rumored that through their use of cryptography they kept their affairs to themselves to such a degree that they eventually forgot who they were. Snide rumors suggested they lost a master key and were thereafter unable to locate, identify or communicate with one another. Despite it having no basis, this is probably mere speculation.
From the solid lack of information available to descendants it appears that there was virtually nothing that was not unknown about the Chagnastes. The few serious scholars who have researched them have concluded that the evidence is inconclusive, while the questions it should answer remain ambiguous. Despite that, researchers agree that the question should be asked, or not.
It seems that the Chagnastes always used borrowed facilities for their communications. All references to their locations seem to have been forwarding addresses.
| PGP | ||
|---|---|---|
| Date | altavista | northernlight |
| 971202 | 189,891 | |
| 980916 | 573,820 | |
| 990320 | 415,368 | |
| 990821 | 372,500 | 207,632 |
| "Pretty Good Privacy" | ||
| Date | altavista | northernlight |
| 971202 | 23,867 | |
| 980916 | 24,554 | |
| 990320 | 20,835 | |
| 990821 | 21,639 | 27,126 |
| my near PGP near key | ||
| Date | altavista | northernlight |
| 971202 | 22,606 | |
| 980916 | 823,000 | |
| 990320 | 459,940 | |
| 990821 | 1,500,370 | 4,284 |
| "-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----" | ||
| Date | altavista | northernlight |
| 971202 | 17,197 | |
| 980916 | 17,048 | |
| 990320 | 11,979 | |
| 990821 | 13,400 | 16,505 |
| "-----BEGIN PGP " | ||
| Date | altavista | northernlight |
| 971202 | 30,822 | |
| 980916 | 44,672 | |
| 990320 | 24,108 | |
| 990821 | 36,059 | 45,277 |
Note: Since we have every reason to believe that actual stats regarding PGP are rising, the numbers above suggest what my own experience has shown in recent months: AltaVista is hosed. It is as leaky as a sieve, loses pages it once had catalogued and indexed, keeps pages that have been dead for months, even years, and its algorithms clearly are tinkered with too frequently and by people who shouldn't be allowed near a computer.
Accordingly, I've begun to include northernlight.com, which has been measured recently as having mapped a larger fraction of the WWW than any other search engine.
Information hiding & digital watermarking : an annotated bibliography [15 March 1999]
I have placed Neil F. Johnson's material last because he has, intentionally or mindlessly, managed to pollute the search engines with hundreds of links to his many individual pages. To find useful stego links it is now necessary to use boolean expressions to exclude Johnson's pages in order to see any of the others. A pox on Johnson.
Luca Venuti's Home Page - TPC: Private Idaho User's Manual
Sir Winston Rayburn - Crypto/Politico
Encryption Policy Resource Page
(none presently)
Last updated: (modified but, alas, not updated)