I remember c'punks laughing about the last Kerberos-based transaction I heard about, the Gopher billing server at CMU, but I can't remember why... Cheers, Bob Hettinga

From: bcn@ISI.EDU Date: Sat, 3 Dec 1994 17:20:03 -0800 Posted-Date: Sat, 3 Dec 1994 17:20:03 -0800 Original-From: Clifford Neuman <bcn@ISI.EDU> To: www-buyinfo@allegra.att.com, kerberos@mit.edu Subject: Announcing availability of NetCheque X-UIDL: 786585323.000

NetCheque(TM) is an electronic payment system for the Internet developed at the Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California. Users registered with NetCheque accounting servers are able to write checks to other users. When deposited, the check authorize the transfer of funds from one account to another. NetCheque uses Kerberos to protect electronic checks.

A binary NetCheque release is available for Sun4 systems running SunOS. A source release, and binary releases for other architectures will be available within several weeks.

To write checks or deposit checks you will require a a NetCheque account. Eventually, there will be many accounting servers from which you can obtain an account, but in the early stages of the trial, there is only one. You must fill out the account application, which may be obtained by sending an e-mail request to NetCheque@isi.edu.

Though we can grant NetCheque accounts to anyone that requests one, because the software uses encryption to protect the checks we regret that we will not be able to send the software itself to users outside the United States. Users in the United States may retrieve the software from prospero.isi.edu in the directory /pub/netcheque/distribution.

Additional information on NetCheque can be found through our home page:

http://nii-server.isi.edu/info/NetCheque/

Payments using NetCheque originate from named user accounts, providing no anonymity. We are also working on an electronic currency system called NetCash to support weakly anonymous payments. The NetCash system was described in a paper in the 1993 ACM Conference on Computer and Communications security, available through our home page.

Clifford Neuman Gennady (Ari) Medvinsky

----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923