I said: >I can't dig up the memory, but I think I heard of a similar idea -- >random structure in transparent solid, difficult to copy -- used in >some kind of tag or seal for nuclear security. Can anyone remind me >what this might have been?
Someone suggested in personal mail I look at the Slashdot discussion. Thanks. A couple of people there mention its use for tamper-evident tags or seals or both (nobody seems too certain). Google tells me the DOD has entire conferences on seals, which I guess makes perfect sense, and I imagine the details would be in there somewhere. I looked at Ravikanth's dissertation, but it gave no direct reference to this work. It did reference "quantum subway tokens" and a recent patent which used the random-solid idea; possibly the nuclear stuff was assumed as prior work to those. Putting this in the framework of cryptography (as "physical one-way functions", etc.) seems to be one of this thesis' contributions. -- Eli Brandt | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~eli/ (finished Ph.D., woohoo; looking for good work in the Seattle area) --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]