Re: Who needs time vaults anyway?
An application that I've seen is financial data, more specifically MBS payment info.
In the real world, there's a trustee/nominee of some sort who does this. What's that to keep that from happening on the net, just like our much maligned (guy's gotta make a living, fer chrissake!) assassination-payoff escrow agent... Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com) Shipwright Development Corporation, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA (617) 958-3971 "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell
Phree Phil: Email: zldf@clark.net http://www.netresponse.com/zldf <<<<<
On Sat, 11 Nov 1995, Robert Hettinga wrote:
In the real world, there's a trustee/nominee of some sort who does this. What's that to keep that from happening on the net, just like our much maligned (guy's gotta make a living, fer chrissake!) assassination-payoff escrow agent...
Nothing really; It would probably be better to do some sort of secret sharing and use a number of somewhat trusted escrow-agents, but the protocols aren't too complex. For the simple case where the release is time based, you could even make the process totally automatic; just have the escrow agents send off their bits of the key when the time has expired, and voila. As for real time-release - how about just using conventional encryption, and require it to be brute-forced? Depending on how fine grained you want the release to be, you could also take the inverse of Moore's law, work out how big a key you need to have it unbreakable in less than the desired time, add in whatever fudge factors you feel like based on how much it would be worth to the opponent to get early access, then lock up the secret and throw away the key. Simon
On Sat, 11 Nov 1995, Simon Spero wrote:
Depending on how fine grained you want the release to be, you could also take the inverse of Moore's law, work out how big a key you need to have it unbreakable in less than the desired time, add in whatever fudge factors you feel like based on how much it would be worth to the opponent to get early access, then lock up the secret and throw away the key.
Simon
The main problem I would see with this scheme is that it uses Moore's law. I do not think that Moore's law will hold true forever. Microchips are becoming so small that they will eventually reach a point where they will not be able to be any smaller without facing quantum uncertainty. At this point, either the increase in computer speed will stop or something like parallel processing or quantum computers will become feasible and the amount of compute time will be very little. Using this type of scheme might be usefull now, but most likely, a new law about increasing computer power will have to be developed in the next twenty years. -- `finger -l markm@omni.voicenet.com` for public key and Geek Code Public Key/1024: 0xF9B22BA5 BD 24 D0 8E 3C BB 53 47 20 54 FA 56 00 22 58 D5 Homepage URL:http://www.voicenet.com/~markm/
Tasteless joke. Do not take seriously. On Sat, 11 Nov 1995, Robert Hettinga wrote:
What's that to keep that from happening on the net, just like our much maligned (guy's gotta make a living, fer chrissake!) assassination-payoff escrow agent...
Oh you must mean those wily hackers at Digicrime. Way to go Matt. My server originally had trouble looking up the host; must have been some last-ditch effort by those spooks at SAIC (I did note some recent obituaries and resignations on their board, heheh...). It's all fine now though. Excellent means of gaining employment and weapons practice. Gives new meaning to the phrase "affirmative action hiring". (though I still haven't seen my last check in the mail, guys. Hint, hint, hint.) Just wondering, does the company presently have a market quote for captive CS profs? (shaddup over there! stop counting primes already) Looking forward to the forthcoming Blacknet Unspeakable Comm-Oddities Exchange (a rather nice slant on AMIX, eh?). (still selling those babies, Tim?)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In article <v02120d05accab753260f@[199.0.65.105]>, Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com> wrote:
In the real world, there's a trustee/nominee of some sort who does this. What's that to keep that from happening on the net, just like our much maligned (guy's gotta make a living, fer chrissake!) assassination-payoff escrow agent...
Note that with event-release crypto, the houses could make a public key available, with the secret key to be held until the death of Tom Target. That key pair could be used by any of its anonymous buyers while the crypto house remained ignorant not only of the content and authorship of the messages, but even of the messages' existance -- nothing at all to subpoena. The same key could be used by Tom to encrypt his will, by the assassin's employer to encrypt the payment, and by anyone to place a bet on whether Tom will die within a certain period of time (by using ecash that expires, like Digicash). -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMKVaheyjYMb1RsVfAQEf7wP+OBRVv0UaoO6TLOcCHkwnMF8fMBFc2X3P 8fNV+ICtgWZwp+Bso58h3ocbyx9ilNOhI5l67JG4Oio+84gAnGpWS392KuXu84un ROpO5ityE0Vhb//ToreVdQVCMvvSsO9cNOQCtFN4v9z/H+YD9YlE0yjp9fTsa32M th9WA86OmbM= =V97C -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Shields.
participants (5)
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Mark M. -
rah＠shipwright.com -
s1113645＠tesla.cc.uottawa.ca -
shields＠tembel.org -
Simon Spero