[11711] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: unforgeable optical tokens?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Nelson Minar)
Fri Sep 20 16:25:43 2002
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 2002 12:32:46 -0700
From: Nelson Minar <nelson@monkey.org>
To: Hadmut Danisch <hadmut@danisch.de>
Cc: cryptography@wasabisystems.com
In-Reply-To: <20020920175602.GA3920@danisch.de>
>I see several applications where these tokens could be really
>useful where biometric methods are completely useless. Main advantage
>seems to be that these tokens are extremely cheap. There are heaps
>of applications where these tokens seem to be just perfect.
For a bit of perspective, this work comes out of a research lab that
has worked with a variety of technologies for digital IDs for physical
objects. Barcodes, RFID tags, smart cards, etc - all are ways to give
a physical object a unique sequence.
What's interesting about these optical tokens is that they are
supposedly unforgeable, and they are very cheap. By contrast barcodes
can be copied too easily. Smartcards are too expensive.
Physical security tokens are the most prosaic application of this
capability. Think tracking applications, object recognition on a
wearable computer, ... Things That Think.
nelson@monkey.org
. . . . . . . . http://www.media.mit.edu/~nelson/
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