BoardWatch on digital cash

[Stanton McCandlish <mech@eff.org>]

See current (July 1994) _BoardWatch_, pp. 60-63.  There's an article on an
e-money scheme called NetCash.  Unfortunately it is utterly stupid, but
BW is giving it a semi-endorsement.  Some of you d-c afficionados might
like to disabuse them of some notions. 

Some of the flaws:

1) not cryptographically secure
2) someone can randomly guess the ser. # of your digicash and go spend it
3) non-anonymous
4) the person transferring the netbucks to you can actually spend it
before you validate it with the central server (e.g. it would only be of
use in cases where product/service has yet to be rendered, and customer
gives you the netmoney, which you verify and only then serve them. 
Completely useless otherwise.)

There are more, but those are the main ones.

-- 
Stanton McCandlish * mech@eff.org * Electronic Frontier Found. OnlineActivist
F O R   M O R E   I N F O,    E - M A I L    T O:     I N F O @ E F F . O R G 
O  P  E  N    P  L  A  T  F  O  R  M     O  N  L  I  N  E    R  I  G  H  T  S
V  I   R   T   U   A   L   C  U   L   T   U   R   E      C  R   Y   P   T   O