[43592] in Cypherpunks
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daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (anonymous-remailer@shell.portal.co)
Fri Nov 17 22:38:24 1995
Date: Fri, 17 Nov 1995 19:30:52 -0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
From: anonymous-remailer@shell.portal.com
Subject: Shoe-horning Mondex onto the Internet -- still won't fit
There many high barriers to the shoe-horning of Mondex onto the Internet:
+ Was not designed for the Internet, rather for physical portable cards
+ Requires expensive hardware: >$100/board for a PC in start-up quantities
+ Accoring to inside sources, is vulnerable to MITM between payer and payee
+ According to inside sources, is grossly vulnerable to replay attacks
(offline multi-spending to different parties)
+ The designers have zero experience and reputation in the cryptographic and
computer security communities
+ None of the Mondex designs have been published or peer reviewed.
+ The protocol cannot be published for security reasons, which means
-- Mondex has security holes
-- Customers who defraud Mondex-using banks have legal deniability in a
court of law: they can simply request banks to produce the security
protocols as evidence; if they refuse the case is thrown out of
court (precedent: UK and US phantom-ATM withdrawal cases)
