DCSB: Ramzan and Van Someren; Minting Millidollars for Streaming Cash

[R. A. Hettinga]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

[Note that the Harvard Club is now "business casual". No more jackets and
ties... --RAH]


          The Digital Commerce Society of Boston

                         Presents


                      Zulfikar Ramzan,
                  Financial Cryptographer,
             MIT Laboratory for Computer Science

                           and

                   Dr. Nicko Van Someren,
                   Financial Cryptographer,
                  Chief Technology Officer,
                         nCipher PLC,

                   "Aspen" vs. "Hancock":
          Minting Millidollars for Streaming Cash

                 Tuesday, November 7th, 2000
                         12 - 2 PM
              The Downtown Harvard Club of Boston
                One Federal Street, Boston, MA


Zulfikar Ramzan is currently a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology where he works with the Cryptography and Information
Security research group. At MIT, he works under the supervision of
Professor Ronald Rivest, co-inventor of the RSA public-key cryptosystem
and the Micromint micropayment protocol. He has authored a number of
publications in the field of cryptography and has presented his research
at various conferences in his field [including the International
Conference on Financial Cryptography --RAH]. He holds a number of patents
in data security, and some of his work is being considered for use in
several national and international standards in the wireless
communications industry. Mr. Ramzan has worked in cryptographic algorithm
and protocol design with the Wireless Secure Communications group at
Lucent Technologies. Upon graduation, Mr. Ramzan will join Lucira
Technologies.


Dr Nicko van Someren co-founded nCipher in 1996. As Chief Technology
Officer Nicko leads nCipher's research team and directs the technical
development of nCipher products. From 1993 to 1996, Nicko was Technical
Director and co-founder of ANT Limited, where he developed hardware
products and application software. Before that, he was employed as a
Researcher by Xerox EuroPARC and as a Software Engineer by Atari Research
and Perihelion Software Limited. Nicko has almost 20 years' experience in
cryptography, software and hardware product development, and holds a
Doctorate and First Class degree in Computer Science from Trinity
College, Cambridge, UK.


Zully Ramzan will talk about the proposed design of Aspen: a practical
Micromint implementation for IBUC, the Internet Bearer Underwriting
Corporation. In addition to going over the basic underlying protocols, he
will discuss the various design and parameter choices. He will also
examine the practical ramifications of these decisions. Thereafter he
will discuss potential modifications and extensions that may be of use
for future implementations of Aspen. The ideas he will present are based
on discussions with Ron Rivest and Adi Shamir, the two co-inventors of
Micromint.

Nicko van Someren will then talk about the practical problems surrounding
the implementation of a MicroMint. He will consider the engineering
issues along with the economic issues and look at how the nature of
MicroMint mandates various unhelpful deployment issues. He will also
consider alternatives to MicroMint which aim to solve these issues.
[Including a signature-based solution IBUC is calling, for lack of a
better moniker, "Hancock", which would be about 100 times cheaper to
prototype, much less get to market, and streaming cash on the wire in 3-6
months. :-) --RAH]

Want to know what IBUC's going to do *now*? Come to the November DCSB
meeting and find out.


Appropriately enough, this meeting of the Digital Commerce Society of
Boston will be held on Election Day, Tuesday, November 7th, 2000, from
12pm - 2pm at the Downtown Branch of the Harvard Club of Boston, on One
Federal Street. The price for lunch is $35.00. This price includes lunch,
room rental, A/V hardware if necessary, and the speakers' lunch. The
Harvard Club has relaxed its dress code, which is now "business casual",
meaning no sneakers or jeans. Fair warning: since we purchase these
luncheons in advance, we will be unable to refund the price of your meal
if the Club finds you in violation of what's left of its dress code.


We need to receive a company check, or money order, (or, if we *really*
know you, a personal check) payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", by
Saturday, November 4th, or you won't be on the list for lunch. Checks
payable to anyone else but The Harvard Club of Boston will have to be
sent back.

Checks should be sent to Robert Hettinga, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston,
Massachusetts, 02131. Again, they *must* be made payable to "The Harvard
Club of Boston", in the amount of $35.00. Please include your e-mail
address so that we can send you a confirmation

If anyone has questions, or has a problem with these arrangements (We've
had to work with glacial A/P departments more than once, for instance),
please let us know via e-mail, and we'll see if we can work something
out.


Upcoming speakers for DCSB are:

December    TBA
TBD         Ted Byfield      Decentralized DNS Control
TBD         Scott Moskowitz  Watermarking and Bluespike


As you can see, :-), we are actively searching for future speakers. If
you are in Boston on the first Tuesday of the month, are a principal in
digital commerce, and would like to make a presentation to the Society,
please send e-mail to the DCSB Program Committee, care of Robert
Hettinga, <mailto: rah at shipwright.com>.


For more information about the Digital Commerce Society of Boston, send
"info dcsb" in the body of a message to <mailto: majordomo at reservoir.com>