Russia's Second Response

Broadcast message from shoham@ll.mit.edu as Russia in barney:

About changing the signature to defeat fakes.

I've used this method in the past, (In my first Email game, as Russia, I signed my name 'Rasputen', but used a different spelling for each addressee. It is easy to come up with 6 plausible way to spell that name), but later decided that the utility of this method is rather limited.

Against careless players, the signature change wouldn't even be noticed.

A careful player who receives what is said to be a copy of a message and notices that the signature is different will consider several possibilities:

1. That the message is genuine, and that

1a. the original sender uses a different signature whenever communicating with the leaker, including this time.

1b. the original sender changed the signature only this time to discredit this message in case of a leak.

2. That the message is a fake, and that

2a. the original sender uses a different signature whenever communicating with the faker, thus causing him to fake incorrectly.

2b. the faker wasn't careful and signed incorrectly.

(In Barney, we had 2a).

Notice that (2a) is totally indistinguishable from (1a) or (1b) as far as what the target of the leak can tell.

(2b), is really the only realistic reason to use this different-signature approach. Namely, hope that when a message of yours is leaked or faked, the recipient would THINK that the leaker/faker wasn't careful and signed incorrectly. Now, against careful players this shouldn't work at all. No one would believe a careful player made such an obvious mistake. Otherwise, the varied signature should be close enough to the original so as to make the hypothesis that this was an inadvertent error plausible.

A spelling change might do it. Inventing a long and complicated title might not. If Turkey notices that England signs his messages "-england", and then France sends a copy of what he says is a message from England that is signed "King Terry II of England" (or something like that), would Turkey then think that France has "inadvertently" invented this complex signature when France really wanted to just imitate English communications?

The reason I think the utility of this method is limited is because for the difference to be so subtle as to make it plausible that it was a true error, it is usually unnoticed by the recipient to begin with.

A possible use is to "expose" fakes when confronted with them. You would then say "ahaa. This is a fake. Notice how the lowly faker misspelled my name. I never do that...". This shouldn't work against anyone who thinks carefully or is experienced since it could be used on real as well as faked messages. (in my "Rasputen" game, I used this to "expose" as a fake what was actually a genuine leak...)

Dan Shoham
shoham@ll.mit.edu

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