RE: www.digicash.com
At 12:04 AM -0500 on 2/17/00, Lucky Green wrote: What I don't fully understand is why the contents of a 5 year old press release with minor changes in capitalization are now considered news. Because *they* think it's news? :-). Naaa... That's not nice. They bought the blind signature patent fair and square, it's now theirs, and they can do anything they want with it. That, folks is a fact on the ground, and there's not much anyone can do about it by caterwalling, any more than caterwalling about the previous owners got us anywhere. At least they're not, as someone said recently, letting it gather dust. For what they paid for majority control of the company, the valuation that price places on the company, and the expected value of that investment in today's hot internet market, I should hope not. If they paid $8 Million to buy 51% of Digicash, that means that the valuation of the company is, say, 16 million, and they probably want to double that, so their desired present value, exclusive of any other work they have to do, is, say, $40 million. So, frankly, I expect that they're starting where they were because that's where they *are* right now, and, frankly starting up the bilge pumps to keep the intellectual property ship afloat is probably okay, as long as they're making reasonable progress towards a port somewhere. That said, the most important thing to *me*, and others like me :-), about the website is that they think that WAP is where they think they're going to make their money, and not on the actual internet itself. For obvious reasons, :-), I think this is a mistake, but that's neither here nor there, as long as somebody does it. Obviously, most of us look to licensing as the only way for progress to happen on actually reducing the blind signature patent to practice, and there is, apparently, some receptivity to this on ecash Technology's part. Fairly soon, a several of us will be making our own attemmpts to reduce that particular idea to practice, as well. Cheers, RAH - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.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'
RE: www.digicash.com
--- begin forwarded text Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 10:48:04 -0900 To: "R. A. Hettinga" [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Somebody from the Big Country... Subject: RE: www.digicash.com hi Bob, ...they think that WAP is where they think they're going to make their money, and not on the actual internet itself. I disagree - if their goal is to double (or otherwise short- term maximize) the value of their investment, they are simply identifying the market that will be able and willing to buy them out and positioning their product in that space. I'll lay odds they'll be acquired by phone.com for ~$400MM this year (assuming minimal additional investment on their part.) later, Somebody's .sig --- end forwarded text - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.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'
Re: www.digicash.com
In v04220810b4d07e3edb5b@[10.0.1.2], on 02/16/00 at 10:18 AM, "R. A. Hettinga" [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: --- begin forwarded text Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 19:04:15 -0500 From: Somebody To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: www.digicash.com "fascinating" --- end forwarded text from http://www.digicash.com/Company/ "eCash software uses digital signature technology based on public key cryptography, to provide authentication, non-repudiation, data integrity, and confidentiality. For the maximum security available, eCash uses 768-bit RSA keys with 3-DES. eCash is a very efficient protocol, which enables key lengths to increase over time without unduly impacting performance. eCash uses Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA-1) for its cryptographic hash function. eCash owns and uses a patented blind signature encoding algorithm that allows banks to issue eCash, which can be sent from consumer to merchant in complete privacy. As financial institutions develop interoperable certificate authorities for issuing digital certificates, eCash will apply standard bank digital certificates to eCash payment protocols." Website is still in the construction phase and only limited info there. The 768-bit RSA keys seem a little small and I am not all that sure that 3-DES is the best choice of symetric algorithms for this application. It is good to see that someone is putting the patents to use rahter than let them collect dust on a shelf until they expire (anyone know when that is?) -- --- William H. Geiger IIIhttp://www.openpgp.net Geiger Consulting Data Security Cryptology Consulting Programming, Networking, Analysis PGP for OS/2: http://www.openpgp.net/pgp.html --- Fight Censorship! Stop the MPAA! http://www.openpgp.net/censorship.html -BEGIN PGP MESSAGE, PART 20/36- CIIrg/KAxYOMga8KsNu9tOItW//m0LjnzXr14N9eVevW1ut05coflnb96Nuq/mVV B8nfb6qCt6A0cPUDQPrEPZ15vD6p7rqnau1Qux0Kr8N7NfeTHdGw2pz5h2XFQ3Tm 3wza4uL4iP6b917fPcS9/vZqcu2eZapyMz3q7ZlLU91dRdfmRyPcjy76qmXlq+Lr vnnkFIOBU42vzcuXJp4NXSeVR5QXfTHx1cOhOTVz82Wnez4bXuzZ2Y9QKJ9rF65f vkzG2NmvH9Dg1av50DfC/HR4fHRkfq6pq+4NzmXvsTbul3wbTbBfRzc2rYHeUQ4q CqYyL83kwpyeVkPjtuWoW9mjo8sDBr1ftmvz7oAW6lday+8G3DcLvVcbN9z9utXm SAvdF57HQybxbm9L98ewP7VOzYyOzk86Z9B6d3OeDd+FJYr2nuO958Xwwvlu/xt+ 1/kL2/COp6Fru3sc7R7Z6W46+z8+H/446Iyyz4wyLPypa9j/5Lv+HDgX2pv17ZVb 3UsTujw32r+LfSuvXl2audN8dLbd+XK+ennrxLv+VbHXXb/T/yNtiX9wjUaHjUZd o6RvlKhRctgo6RrFfaNYjeLDRnHXKOobRWoUHTaKukZj9u5/bOQXxx9/Fjw7fGzc =KMXF -END PGP MESSAGE, PART 20/36-
RE: www.digicash.com
LOL! The reason why the current eCash software uses 768 bit RSA and 3DES is because that's what the original Ecash software used. You know, that software that didn't meet market demand even back in 1995? (The software's failure to meet market demand was unrelated to the crypto that was used. And FYI, the 768 bit RSA was used for performance reasons). Which gets us to why the current software use the same algorithms as the software from 5 years ago: because it is essentially the same software. What I don't fully understand is why the contents of a 5 year old press release with minor changes in capitalization are now considered news. What am I missing? Thanks, --Lucky Green [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Eric Murray Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2000 10:59 To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Re: www.digicash.com On Wed, Feb 16, 2000 at 11:23:53AM -0600, William H. Geiger III wrote: from http://www.digicash.com/Company/ "eCash software uses digital signature technology based on public key cryptography, to provide authentication, non-repudiation, data integrity, and confidentiality. For the maximum security available, eCash uses 768-bit RSA keys with 3-DES. eCash is a very efficient protocol, which enables key lengths to increase over time without unduly impacting performance. eCash uses Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA-1) for its cryptographic hash function. eCash owns and uses a patented blind signature encoding algorithm that allows banks to issue eCash, which can be sent from consumer to merchant in complete privacy. As financial institutions develop interoperable certificate authorities for issuing digital certificates, eCash will apply standard bank digital certificates to eCash payment protocols." Website is still in the construction phase and only limited info there. The 768-bit RSA keys seem a little small and I am not all that sure that 3-DES is the best choice of symetric algorithms for this application. Those sound optimized for smartcard use. Single DES cores are pretty small and can be called 3 times to do 3DES. RSA keys take a lot of storage and smartcards are slow to do RSA (or they're more expensive). I'd prefer to see 1024 bit RSA also, but I can understand why they'd use 768. And that's way better than some other systems I'm seeing... -- Eric Murray www.lne.com/~ericm ericm at the site lne.com PGP keyid:E03F65E5
Re: RE: www.digicash.com
I checked out the site and where there use to be listings of merchants and banks, there are none. There is a blurb about a successful pilot. I knew at one time they had Mark Twain Bank signed up. The last time I looked it was just non-US banks. Mark Twain probably got gobbled up in a merger or something. I've heard mumblings that US banks are just sitting quietly until the patent runs out. Supposedly they are doing the same Smart Card Technology. Neil Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.interl.net/~njohnson -Original Message- From: Lucky Green [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Multiple recipients of list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wednesday, February 16, 2000 11:11 PM Subject: CDR: RE: www.digicash.com LOL! The reason why the current eCash software uses 768 bit RSA and 3DES is because that's what the original Ecash software used. You know, that software that didn't meet market demand even back in 1995? (The software's failure to meet market demand was unrelated to the crypto that was used. And FYI, the 768 bit RSA was used for performance reasons). Which gets us to why the current software use the same algorithms as the software from 5 years ago: because it is essentially the same software. What I don't fully understand is why the contents of a 5 year old press release with minor changes in capitalization are now considered news. What am I missing? Thanks, --Lucky Green [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Eric Murray Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2000 10:59 To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Re: www.digicash.com On Wed, Feb 16, 2000 at 11:23:53AM -0600, William H. Geiger III wrote: from http://www.digicash.com/Company/ "eCash software uses digital signature technology based on public key cryptography, to provide authentication, non-repudiation, data integrity, and confidentiality. For the maximum security available, eCash uses 768-bit RSA keys with 3-DES. eCash is a very efficient protocol, which enables key lengths to increase over time without unduly impacting performance. eCash uses Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA-1) for its cryptographic hash function. eCash owns and uses a patented blind signature encoding algorithm that allows banks to issue eCash, which can be sent from consumer to merchant in complete privacy. As financial institutions develop interoperable certificate authorities for issuing digital certificates, eCash will apply standard bank digital certificates to eCash payment protocols." Website is still in the construction phase and only limited info there. The 768-bit RSA keys seem a little small and I am not all that sure that 3-DES is the best choice of symetric algorithms for this application. Those sound optimized for smartcard use. Single DES cores are pretty small and can be called 3 times to do 3DES. RSA keys take a lot of storage and smartcards are slow to do RSA (or they're more expensive). I'd prefer to see 1024 bit RSA also, but I can understand why they'd use 768. And that's way better than some other systems I'm seeing... -- Eric Murray www.lne.com/~ericm ericm at the site lne.com PGP keyid:E03F65E5
