The GNotary client
The GNotary client is a Python script providing a graphical user interface to the common tasks of selecting files for a backup, calculating strong hashes for each file, and storing files in a compressed ZIP archive file. By pressing a single button, the hashes of the selected files are calculated and sent to one or more notary servers.
It should run on any platform supporting Python and the wxPython toolkit. I have tested it only on Gnu/Linux and Windows.
At present I am busy with other projects, I would welcome if somebody would continue development and biuld some binaries (built with py2exe) for download. However, the software already works as it is; it just would benefit from additional functionality and some polishing.
At present, I am using the MD5 algorithm. However, the final version should use the more trustworthy RIPEMD-160 algorithm.
The GNotary server
The "server" is a simple python script which grabs incoming mail that matches a filter condition, pipes this mail through the signing process of the GNU privacy guard, retains a copy of the signed message, and sends the signed message back to the sender.
In the future, all notary servers will exchange message digests of their own certificate log mutually (and get them mutually certified), thus creating a virtually unbreakable chain of evidence (tampering with a single mail certificate on a single server would invalidate all other log certificates in an auditable and traceable way).
A second server, and email autoresponder, is set up to send the public key of the notary service on request.
An operational server which you might try is:
Simply write an email containing the message digest or whatever yoiu need notarized, and make sure the subject line contains
gnotarize
and nothing else
To request thepublic key, write an email to
with the subject line containing
gnotary-public-key