[8929] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Anonymity Snake Oil in JXTA
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ben Laurie)
Thu Jun 28 21:30:38 2001
Message-ID: <3B3B6C87.7786281A@algroup.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 18:42:31 +0100
From: Ben Laurie <ben@algroup.co.uk>
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Coderpunks <coderpunks@toad.com>,
Cryptography <cryptography@wasabisystems.com>,
UKCrypto <ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
Cc: JXTA Security <discuss@security.jxta.org>
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JXTA (http://www.jxta.org/) claims to have a payment project which will
"implement anonymous and secure financial transactions". See:
http://payment.jxta.org/servlets/ProjectHome
They have chosen (by what process?) a thing called EPocketCash
(http://www.epocketcash.com/[1]) to do this. Here's the marketing
droidlish: "The goal is to implement the Epocketcash payment protocol
for financial transactions for JXTA. EPocketCash is the first payment
system designed exclusively for the Internet. It allows anybody to be a
merchant and/or a customer at the same time with the same account. This
anonymous payment system will work on any gizmos connected to the
internet. Currently we support the WEB, WAP and I-Mode phones."
Sounds great, no? There's just one teeny problem. It isn't anonymous.
Not even a little bit. It is merely secret. That is, it is tied to bank
accounts, and they promise (no, really) that they won't tell anyone who
you are. Oh, except a judge. Oh, and probably either side of the
transaction (so they can take you to court, see? Isn't that a marvellous
benefit? [well, they told me it was, and they should know, right?]). Oh,
and anyone who breaks into their system.
But it is anonymous really. They said so.
Cheers,
Ben.
[1] I can't actually read this, it renders horribly on Netscape, but my
information comes from Philippe Coupe, President and CEO of IPassport
Corp (who own EPocketCash?).
--
http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html
In Boston 'til 1st July.
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