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E-cash coin questions (Mark Twain / Digicash)
1. How many different coins (serial numbers) can the current Mark
Twain/Digicash protocol support?
2. Does Mark Twain bank maintain 2 lists: 1 of all the ecash serial
numbers for all coins ever produced, and 1 of all the ecash serial
numbers for all coins that have been spent before? Or just 1 list of
the spent coins (assuming that any coin that is signed w/MT's private
key and does not appear on the "spent" list is still valid and is not
counterfeit)?
3. The Digicash scheme allows each coin to be used only once and then
destroyed. How many coins will it take before all possible coins are
minted, used and destroyed thereby requiring banks to issue new coins
with "recycled" serial numbers? Remember, each time a "transaction"
takes place, an existing coin is destroyed and a new coin is minted.
and a transaction can simply be Alice giving her friend Bob a dollar
(not necessarily using the ecash for a purchase)
4. What is the probability of guessing a valid serial number,
assuming there are 1 million, 1 billion or 1 trillion coins in
circulation?
5. Suppose you have a very large number of
cash coins signed by the
same bank (say, Mark Twain) and you know the record layout of each
coin (easy enough since you can decrypt it with the bank's public
key), and for each coin the "bank name" field is the same (because
it's the same bank!) -- then, would it be possible to hack the RSA
encryption and recreate the bank's private key?
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Version: 1.0.0, Copyright 1995, Pretty Bad Privacy
David Klur
[email protected]
I am who I am because I say so. So there.
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