Re: Weaknesses in Smart Cards? (Re: FLA_wed)

[Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com>]

> As best I can figure, extracting the secret from a Mondex card gives you not
> merely the money from the card, but the "digital plates" with which to mint
> arbitrarily much more money. I only say this because the only protocol the
> I can think of that fits what we do know of Mondex has this problem. This fault
> does not plague Chaum cash.

There is no way to know for sure, since Mondex won't release the specs, 
but just about everybody I talk with that knows at least something about 
their system agrees that if you crack a Mondex card, you will likely be 
able to mint money. Since Mondex allows transfers from card to card to 
card, it may be a long time indeed before the breech is disovered. If I 
were a Mondex issuer, I would be worried. Very worried.

--Lucky