[3539] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Real nice HP evaluation of Micropayment bearer protocols,
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Sun Oct 25 03:15:04 1998
Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 21:09:13 -0400
To: Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs@philodox.com>, cryptography@c2.net,
dcsb@ai.mit.edu
From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
I'm rooting around on the net looking for hash-collision money protocols as
part of the white paper I'm doing for a Credit Card Company to be Named
Later (hope they'll still take it this late :-), nothing like a wheel-up
landing, I always say...), and I found something *real* nice.
<http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/97/HPL-97-14.pdf> is a pretty lucid, and
concise, analysis of various digital bearer micropayment protocols,
including the three old chestnuts, Millicent, MicroMint, and PayWord, and
another one I never heard of.
I think if you turn the "*.pdf" above into "*.html" you'll get the abstract.
Happy reading, and, of course, tell me whatcha think!
By the way, does anyone know if Wagner's attack on MicroMint has been put
up on the net yet? The only time I saw it was over Goldberg's shoulder at
FC98, and then it looked like a rather scary-looking scatter-plot which, I
was told, predicted Rivest's hash-generation better than Rivest's did. :-).
(When I told Rivest about it later, he said it was great to know that real
*smart* people were paying attention to his work :-))
Don't know if that's even what I remember seeing.
Also, did you notice that all the *cheap* micropayment systems are digital
bearer systems? And, something I didn't remember when I saw MicroMint at
MIT, it is both anonymous and prevents double spending. Marvellous. It
requires an encrypted channel, but, hey, IPSEC's an encrypted channel,
right?
The Truth is Out There...
Cheers,
Bob Hettinga
-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
