mental cryptography

[s1018954 at aix2.uottawa.ca]

On Tue, 17 Oct 1995, Nathan Loofbourrow wrote:

> Well, then, perhaps on-line systems need to consider cash
> revocation in case of theft. Actually, this is a no-brainer: just
> exchange the cash for some new coin, and the old stuff goes
> invalid. Admittedly, this means a footrace for the mugger and the
> victim, so I guess the mugger is encouraged to knock you out cold.
 (snip)
> Duress PINs liberally sprinkled through the keyspace also drop the
> efficacy of brute-force PIN search for the thief.
> 
Besides (if you *really* want to be paranoid) you'd still have still have 
that cash on your hard drive and several other smart cards. Assuming you 
record which cash you put onto which smartcard onto your database or 
whatever, you'd exchange the stolen cash with the bank before brute force 
would succeed. Mugger still gets stuck with a duress code.

Either you have an automated paranoia setup that constantly changes 
your net worth into new currency (rejuvenating your cash against aging 
by factoring) or yeah, it really is better for the mugger to get rid of you. 
This also protects against the chinese lottery attacks some people on the 
list are trying to set up (assuming it really is ubiquitous by then).
It really might become a lottery with ecas. Factor PINs (assuming they're
small enough) and make real money.

This could easily be part of an automated trading program of the kind 
used by stock brokers. You'd probably use it anyway if the currency market 
were totally digital (low, if not no transaction fees) to compensate for 
currency fluctuations. Private currencies might be very volatile. Hell, if any 
of this succeeds, government currencies would be extremely volatile. 

Gold might start looking good again. (though platinum's better, almost all 
the world's platinum's in South Africa and odds are no one's gonna find any new
sources. Anyone know if I'm totally wrong? I'm no economist.)

(waiting to see if ala.usmc.mil is going to send more bouncemail)