[Subject changed as per posting guidelines, was "Re: [Asrg] Microsoft
publicly announces Penny Black PoW postage project". Mod.]
Art Pollard wrote:
At 10:14 AM 12/26/2003, you wrote:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3324883.stm
Some interesting quotes:
The idea was originally formulated to use CPU memory cycles by team
member Cynthia Dwork in 1992. But they soon realised it was better to
use memory latency - the time it takes for the computer's processor
to get information from its memory chip - than CPU power.
They are addressing one of the problems with HashCash - spammers with
faster computers can do it faster, and also mobile users will have
problems as well.
That way, it does not matter how old or new a computer is because the
system does not rely on processor chip speeds, which can improve at
rapid rates.
A cryptographic puzzle that is simple enough not to bog down the
processor too much, but that requires information to be accessed from
memory, levels the difference between older and newer computers.
One problem that I see with this that nothing prevents spammers from
building specialized chips to do the computation. I remember sometime
ago that a specialized computer or chip was build to crack DES. But then
again, I am not a big cryptography expert and a lot of the details here
are murky.
The concern that I would have is whether Microsoft has any patents
currently in existence or any submarine patents that Microsoft will
finalize in 5-10 years and demand a lock on e-mail if it is adopted.
This brings us to another interest quote in the article:
"Microsoft's idea is to shift this cost burden from the recipient to
the sender, which in itself seems like a reasonable sentiment." But,
he said, for such a scheme to be all-encompassing, there would have
to be some provision for open standards, so that it is not
proprietary to Microsoft.
I wouldn't be suprised if they came here asking for standards on their
technology, but if that does happen, they are required to disclose their
IPR ahead of time.
What is also strange to me, is that they are releasing this by
themselves, not as part of their "big gorilla" alliance with AOL and
Yahoo. Taking into account that Yahoo released their proposal by
themselves as well, it raises questions about their alliance.
Yakov
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Yakov Shafranovich / asrg <at> shaftek.org
SolidMatrix Technologies, Inc. / research <at> solidmatrix.com
"Why are both drug addicts and computer aficionados both called
users?" (Clifford Stoll)
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