Re: Digital Cash

[Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com>]

I too would like to hear more about tamper-proof software modules.  They
would be a natural for software implementations of Clipper (although
perhaps too slow for many applications).  Imagine running the Clipper
algorithm on your own computer and it comes out with your key exposed
to listeners armed with the proper black box, yet you cannot disable
this exposure.  Interesting thought.

I doubt that these would work as digital cash observers, though, even
if possible.  It seems to me that the digicash observer has to retain
some internal state.  In effect, it has to remember which coins you have
spent and which you have not.  You can cheat, then, by checkpointing
your computer just before spending a coin.  After you spend, you restore
the computer to exactly the same state it was in before you spent it.
You then go somewhere else and spend the coin again.  The observer has
no way of knowing that these games have been played with its state, yet
you have obtained twice the value of the coin.

Most of the observer-based protocols are also after-the-fact double-
spending-detection protocols as well, so that if the observer is defeated
you can still catch the miscreant eventually.  But the two problems with
this are, first, that it prevents the client from being anonymous to the
bank, and second, that the cheater can still multiple-spend quickly and
then escape the country before being caught.

It was pointed out on sci.crypt some months ago the irony that Chaum's
privacy-preserving cash relies on similar tamper-resistant technology to
the privacy-destroying Clipper chip.

Hal