On Wed, 2005-07-13 at 23:43 -0400, Rich Salz wrote: > > I think that by eliminating the need for a merchant to learn > > information about your identity ... > > Wasn't that a goal of SET?
As I recall, the goal of SET was to have a standard that was not invented by CyberCash. (I may be biased, I worked at CyberCash at the time). Both SET and the CyberCash protocols did not allow the merchant to have access to the purchasers's PAN/expry. Everyone back then knew that since the PAN was considered a secret, you couldn't be casual about passing it around. And merchant fraud was a much more realistic problem that capturing data on the fly. CyberCash was forced to change the system to allow the merchant to have access to the PAN so that merchants could back out transactions for returns or defects. The change was made in the field by a support engineer before the security folks in engineering had a chance to have a fit. I don't remember why we accepted such a bad practice. In all the discussion here, the thing that strikes me is that we need to stop using secrets as proof of anything. Seems that Chaum's credentials without identities are a much better approach, and I'd guess that his patents are long expired. Pat -- Pat Farrell http://www.pfarrell.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]