Fun in Rosslyn Chapel and What was the Templar Cipher?

[R. A. Hettinga]

I'm dong an IBUC shirt for EFCE2K, and, given that we're in Edinburgh, and
Rosslyn Chapel, the famous Templar, um, Mecca, is here, and the Templars
ran the original money transfer business, using cryptography no less,
Fearghas and I popped out to Roslin to root around for stuff to stick on
the aforesaid shirt.

Close, but, more or less, no cigar. We saw the faded remains of a Templar
floriated cross on the Earl of St. Clair's supposed crypt-cover (kinda
small, people speculate about all kinds of goodies in there), which might
have been cool, but it was all eroded and I haven't found line art of one
on the web and it's late.

I've gotten a couple kinda-crypto things, of which I'll pick one for the
shirt tomorrow morning before we mail it out to the silkscreener, but what
I'd *really* like to know, if it's not one of the many "secrets" of the
Templars [like the shroud of Turin is DeMolay, or that the Templars were
Masons, or vice versa, or that they had the head of John the Baptist (or
christ, or Joseph, or the original Green Man) or that they *really* had the
Ark of the Covenent, or the Holy Grail, or that DeMolay was the Second
Gunman on the Grassy Knoll :-), or, whatever] is...

Has anyone ever figured out, or "discovered" or whatever, what kind of
cryptosystem the Templars used to encrypt, decrypt, sign/modify the chits
(dare I say bearer certificates? ;-)) they used so that people could go
from preceptory to preceptory, getting cash/food/whatever, all the way to
the holy land (and get the remains of their money back, or a bill :-), when
they returned home?

Cheers,
RAH,
Who, oddly enough, and by the sheerest coincidence (and I swear on a stack
of Illuminati), lives in the Roslindale section of Boston, named for
Roslin, home of Rosslyn Chapel
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
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: economics of MicroMint

[Adam Back]

Anonymous writes:
> This gives the mint an advantage over the forger because he will
> generally not be trying to create as many coins as the mint.  Even if
> he is willing to spend as much as the mint in order to compete on the
> per-coin cost, he has a time disadvantage because he does not know the
> secret parameters as early as the mint does.  This does not raise his
> actual costs but it means that he has to spend his money much faster and
> so needs access to proportionately more computing power than the mint.
> It's an expensive proposition.

This is MicroMint's argument.  But you're building a trap door
function out of the advantage the mint gains computing collisions.
It's a shallow trap door function compared to DL or RSA based trap
doors, so the server has to expend nearly as much in CPU resources as
the attacker; and therefore the computational safety margin is much
lower.

It's has higher overhead because of the fast rate of advances in CPUs
and hardware.  So the MicroMint supercomputer farm slowly increases
the steepness of the trap door as it gains advantage, but it probably
has to keep up with hardware advances too, so it's not just one
initial large cash outlay for the hardware, there's the continuous
custom hardware upgrades to stay ahead.

It just seems simpler, safer and cheaper certainly in setup, and
probably long term also in avoiding the ongoing costs to keep custom
hardware up to date, to use a real trapdoor function with a much
steeper trapdoor (DL, RSA).  With DL and RSA advances in computing
power help the encrypter or signer signifcantly faster than they help
the attacker.  

So admittedly DL and RSA are around 4 orders of magnitude slower than
symmetric constructs in software, but the MicroMint initial mint cost
is less than 4 orders ahead, but improving as the threshold effect
kicks in.  DL and RSA can use the amortization tricks of hashchains as
used in Rivest and Shamir's PayWord, and Anderson's similar payment
system to help reduce that.  Off the shelf hardware also reduces the
difference, and hardware is improving currently faster than ecash is
being deployed.

> Since Millicent [you mean MicroMint] cost per coin falls, the more
> coins you create, at some volume of coins it should be cheaper than
> any other system which has a fixed cost per coin.

The larger initial setup cost has a recurring cost in terms of
interest on the setup cost.  We don't yet know whether this is beyond
the level where the threshold to profitability is reached, when you
factor in recurring hardware costs to stay ahead and interest on the
higher setup cost.

Perhaps we can do some back of the envelope comparisons after Bob and
friends publish their cost estimates for the MicroMint custom
supercomputer.

Another assumption which adds to MicroMints risk given the relatively
shallow trapdoor, is the assumption that the attacker has to pay for
his resources.  This is a wonderful opportunity for virus writers:
write a succesful virus and earn millions: the payload in the next
I-LOVE-YOU virus could be a rogue MicroMint minting subprocess.

Perhaps the attacker would risk identification as MicroMint by the
sound of it does not provide cryptographic anonymity, but still the
virus attack may be a viable disruption attack against MicroMint.

> > Hashcash also relies on a similar collision function, however the
> > point there is to achieve distributed minting, and so the cost is
> > distributed, and seen as a side effect incurred to achieve the
> > decentralisation of control.  Millicent does not make use of
> > opportunities for distributing overhead, and so incurs the overhead
> > without gaining the decentralised architecture.
> 
> It's never been clear how or whether hashcash could work as a true
> micropayment system.  What would establish the value of a given hash
> collision?  Who would be willing to receive hashcash and pay out real
> money?

Well I didn't intend it as a true micropayment system.  But see Wei
Dai's b-money [1] for an approach to having transferability and value
to an ecash system with a decentralised minting function.

> With a mint based system like Millicent the mint will work with an
> money changer who will make sure the coins have value by buying and
> selling them for dollars (or whatever).  That's a necessary step in
> getting the payment system accepted.

It may be feasible to get hashcash accepted as a distributed resource
metering system, simply to resist systematic abuse of otherwise
unmetered services, and so make services available which could not
otherwise be offered due to vulnerability to abuse.  

Sure real ecash is better, but hashcash is here now and ecash isn't
yet.  At least not in any widely deployed form, for many reasons:

- the chicken and egg problem; 

- the communications overheads for a centralised payment system
capable of supporting wide scale micropayments are themselves a
significant engineering task

- interacing to the existing payment system f

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Re: Gaylor Spam: Re: Drug-Info Censorship Bills Proliferating

[cypher]

> At 7:22 PM -0800 1/8/00, Tim May wrote:
> >This country needs to have its hard drive reformatted. Removing Washington
> >with weapons of mass destruction would be a good and moral start. Five
> >million welfare addicts, Beltway Bandits, and government criminals...their
> >death will be glorious.

Ka'pla

Re: economics of millicent

[Tim May]

At 8:24 PM +0100 6/22/00, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
>At 7:00 AM + on 6/22/00, lcs Mixmaster Remailer wrote on cypherpunks:
>
>
>>  [Not to be forwarded by Robert Hettinga]
>
> RGHT
>
>[Sure, Anonymous. Tell me your name and I won't forward your stuff.
>
>It's not like someone's going to *reply* to you or anything, hmmm? :-). I
>don't forward Tim's stuff because *he* gets the reply directly if somebody
>has a question he's already answered 5 years ago, and it pisses him off.

It's not just that it pisses me off to get such questions, it's that 
the nature of forwarding means that context is lost, so people see 
only snippets of discussions. Discussions we have on a mailing list 
are generally not intended to be self-contained articles, with proper 
introductions, so people often misunderstand points made.

("Mr. May, I saw your article forwarded to the Cape Cod User's Group 
list. You mentioned something called")

Points are often incorrectly attributed, taken out of context, and 
even cited by scribblers who read these other lists. Made even worse 
by the massive cross-posting of articles, such as that which Matthew 
Gaylor has recently taken up the gauntlet on. Some of the recipients 
are _closed_ lists, which worsens the context problem.

I'm surprised the owners of the closed lists have not discouraged him 
and folks like him from cross-posting widely to their lists.

(Cyberia-L, Fight-Censorship, dcsb, dbs, etc.)

--Tim May
-- 
-:-:-:-:-:-:-:
Timothy C. May  | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
"Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.

Re: Drug-Info Censorship Bills Proliferating

[J.D. Abolins]

Great commentary!

Some satirical oversimplified comments of my own...

Then there is also the move to treat all or almost all of the citizens as
potential criminals. Things like getting more identification and
cataloging of people as a means of "pre-booking" everybody. Who knows
someday anyone of one could commit a crime, so book 'em early --preferably
at birth someday-- Danno.

The innocent until proven guilty approach to criminal justice is eroding.
Once we move to a logged life with some of the emergin technologies, this
notion will be a relic of an unlogged past. Guilty until exonerated by the
logs.


On Thu, 22 Jun 2000, Lizard wrote:

> rates and a need to find something to blame. But with violent crime
> dropping, why does anyone care?" Then, of course, it hit me. As Rand and
> others have noted, a government, by definition, has power ONLY OVER
> CRIMINALS. Fewer violent crimes==fewer criminals==less government power.
> Solution -- make more criminals.
> 
> Ladies and gentlemen, our fine nation is threatened by a shortage of
> crime! We must do all we can to reverse this situation! Mug an old lady,
> for the good of America!

J.D. Abolins 
Meyda Online -- Infosec & Privacy Studies
Web: http://www.meydabbs.com

Re: economics of millicent

[R. A. Hettinga]

At 7:00 AM + on 6/22/00, lcs Mixmaster Remailer wrote on cypherpunks:


> [Not to be forwarded by Robert Hettinga]

 RGHT

[Sure, Anonymous. Tell me your name and I won't forward your stuff.

It's not like someone's going to *reply* to you or anything, hmmm? :-). I
don't forward Tim's stuff because *he* gets the reply directly if somebody
has a question he's already answered 5 years ago, and it pisses him off.
Same goes for other people here who request it. Can't happen with *you*,
now, can it, anonymous, hmmm? The remailer stops that problem rather cold.

Sheesh. The cost of anything, anonymous remailers included, is the foregone
alternative. It's not like your boss, or your wife, or somebody, is going
to find out you said it, foregoing you income -- or even wedded bliss -- to
have your opinions forwarded around anyway...]


Anyway, anonymous, I absolutely agree with you about the cost of the first
penny being a factory, (with ZKS' Adam Back's misappellation of MicroMint
as Millicent being addressed in, and probably crossed in the email with, my
own comment on Adam's missive.)


Though, unfortunately for MicroMint even, people like Nicko Van Someren, of
NCipher, seem to think that they *can* do signature-based micropayments as
cheaply as MicroMint, or cheaper. They point all kinds of bad stuff with
MicroMint:

1.) Moore's law kills the MicroMint Arms Race, in that newer processors
than the MicroMint's are cheaper, though that doesn't take into account all
the deliberately complicating factors (hidden predicates, vaguely
non-standard chipware, etc.) that gets you a leg up on the competition
until rev the MicroMint again.

2.) The economics of forgery gives you 100 percent profit, and the profits
of underwriting are, heh, 85 basis points, gross; of course, that's the
same as it has always been, and pointing at the altitude of an airplane
doesn't mean you can't fly.

3.) The storage cost of, say, 128 bit coins,  and larger coins for
*smaller* values, gives you storage headaches, forcing conversion into
other protocols, which complicate the security mode, though that's just
something else to calculate, cryptography being economics same as it ever
was. And more stuff like this.

Nonetheless, it seems counterintuitive to me that RSA etc., can cost less
in opportunity cost than, say, the average coin-generation cost in
MicroMint. But Nicko's got a PhD. from somewhere in OxBridge, and I don't,
:-), so I'll wait to see what he publishes on all this, and what others,
(like Drs. Rivest and Shamir themselves?), say in reply to that...


Frankly, I could have used you *last* night, anonymous, when one of my own
people took advantage of my jetlag over here in Edinburgh, and tried to
convince me that the forger just had to get *one* token right to get money
for nothing etc., and, of course, I forgot that the cost of the *first*
token in MicroMint is the driving function of the entire cost proposition,
and, mistakenly, in a fit of fatigue-ridden, caffiene sodden dispair, told
him to go ask Adi about it.

In hindsight, I can't remember how many tims I've said the line "it takes a
factory to make a penny" out there on the hustings, and yet I, um, forgot
to remember that last night.  Hell, now that I think about it, I've said it
to *Nicko* himself, and more than once...

Remind me not to argue with people smarter than I am when I've not slept
for 40 hours? :-).

So, until further notice, I think I'll keep my definition of micropayment
by  token-generation protocol (cryptographic function collisions for
micropayments, signatures for anything above that), instead of, say
double-spending method (probabalistic vs. universal testing).


Cheers,
RAH
Who keeps getting into arguments with smarter and smarter people these days...
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
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: Drug-Info Censorship Bills Proliferating

[Lizard]

You know, my first thought was something like, "This anti-drug hysteria
made a sick kind of sense in the 80s and early 90s, with soaring crime
rates and a need to find something to blame. But with violent crime
dropping, why does anyone care?" Then, of course, it hit me. As Rand and
others have noted, a government, by definition, has power ONLY OVER
CRIMINALS. Fewer violent crimes==fewer criminals==less government power.
Solution -- make more criminals.

Ladies and gentlemen, our fine nation is threatened by a shortage of
crime! We must do all we can to reverse this situation! Mug an old lady,
for the good of America!

Re: "Artificial intelligence" filter blocks news -- but not smut

[Michael Motyka]

> >New York Governor George Pataki applauded Exotrope's
> >"state-of-the-art technology," Tucows Network gave BAIR five
> >stars, and PC Magazine handed the program a coveted editor's
> >choice award.
> 
> Which surprises even me. Did PC Magazine not even bother to try some 
> sites to see if Exotrope rejected or accepted them?
> 
> >
> >Exotrope, a privately held firm based in Elmira, New York,
> 
> Gee, Exotrop is in New York. Governor Pataki is in New York.
> 
> Reporters might wish to look into whether or not multiple copies of 
> Exotrope have recently been installed in New York state computers.
> 
Or to look into who is praising it and who is a stockholder. I never
liked Pataki so I'm suspicious. 

AFAIK NYS gov logs e-mails. I know of other large SW goofup contracts
they've been into, I don't doubt they would spend plenty on
site-blocking SW if they thought it would keep titty pictures off their
systems and "improve productivity".

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Re: Tired of Internet Filters Refusing, Beaver College Bows ToPressure And Changes Name CPUNK

[cypher]

> > Point blank -- it is time the censors knew fear. Let them cower and
> > quake for once. One succesful lawsuit on 'false blocking' and the
> > entire censorware business would be exterminated -- no company can
> > manage anything approaching reasonable accuracy. This is one of those
> > very rare cases where the mechanisms of oppression can be turned on
> > the oppressors for minimal risk.
> 
> unfortunately, this has been discussed on the mailing lists surround the
> cyberpatrol hack several months ago already.
> 
> the short summary is that the censorware guys were careful in the
> wording and it'll be tough to get them. they do NOT put "site blocked
> because it contains kiddie p0rn" on the screen. the actual texts are
> more like "according to our list and your settings, this site may
> contain questionable material".


But of course the implication is that your site contains porn or other
offensive material. I suspect you just need to find the right plantiff.

So maybe there still is hope

Jason

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