Re: Who needs time vaults anyway?

[Kevin L Prigge <klp@gold.tc.umn.edu>]

According to rumor, Bryce said:
> 
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> 
> I don't really understand the use for "can't be opened until
> Christmas" tricks.  If you don't want anyone to see your info until
> Christmas then just don't give them a copy until then!  If you want
> to prove that you have it but not let them see it until later then
> do timestamping of hashes, zero-knowledge proofs and so forth.
> 
> 
> Can anyone explain what use this theoretical "time-sensitive" crypto
> box would be good for?

An application that I've seen is financial data, more specifically
MBS payment info. There is 100s of megabytes of data, and it was
encrypted so that nobody could use the info before the release
date/time, but the data needed to be transmitted prior to release
because of bandwidth constraints. In this case, it wasn't real
time-release, because the key was manually transmitted to release
the information rather than implement some sort of "do not decrypt
until" scheme.


-- 
Kevin L. Prigge        |"A computer lets you make more mistakes faster 
UofM Central Computing | than any invention in human history--with the 
email: klp@cis.umn.edu | possible exceptions of handguns and tequila."
01001101100010110010111|- Mitch Ratcliffe