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Subject: Global-Scale Distributed Storage Systems

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  • From: "Josh" <josh AT mercuryfs.net>
  • To: "'Global-Scale Distributed Storage Systems'" <bluesky AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: freenet
  • Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2001 14:22:49 -0700


It is true that credit card fraud does make a lot of money. My goal is a
global method whereby a person does not need to be assigned another ID to
remember. I figured that since credit cards are global, I can utilize them.
Visa and Mastercard currently are not deployed in China, but they are
virtually everywhere else. Since our charges will be 25 cents or less, any
abuse should show up easily.

Even though its going to be a virtually open source design, we will probably
keep the credit card module closed source, so people cant modify it and
redistribute it in order to steal credit card numbers. This should help with
that issue. We believe that the business model of charging an end user an
insignificant amount in order to authenticate them, is a valid model. An
added byproduct of using a credit card is that the bill is an audit log.

Technically, the credit card number is not ever stored locally, and its not
transferred across the internet in an unprotected form. Basically, a UNI ID
is a hash of a credit card number and password. To see this, click here
www.mercuryfs.net/design/uni_id.pdf and here
www.mercuryfs.net/design/fig_96.pdf.

A very useful American law is that a person is only liable for up to $50
(usually they pay nothing) when their credit card has been stolen. I figure
this is an advantage.

I remember years ago, back in the BBS days, some guy stole or deduced a
formula that could turn any credit card that ended in a 6 or a 9 into
another valid credit card number. At least that's what he claimed.

Our goal will be to engineer the system to a near foolproof and automated
level. Either the credit card is full, shut off, its UNI ID disabled by the
owner, or the pin number is invalid.

Oh yeah, the credit card is not necessary to browse files via MFS, its only
used for file writes and encryption features.

As for your points about Americans, I wholly agree, and I'm an American. To
quote Chris Rock? Kid Rock? (I forget who).. "the only reason the cities are
full of black niggers, is because the rest of the countryside is full of
white niggers" To put it another way: people are people. I remember going
to France, and being told by a bunch of Americans that the French are
pricks. I soon realized that the rudest people there were Americans (and
British). Its funny, the Europeans look upon the British as the Texan's of
Europe. In my opinion, if you can handle the attitudes of Los Angeles, you
can go anywhere in the world, because it doesn't get much worse than here. I
even consider New Yorker's to be more honest and direct, and less full of
crap, than people in LA. Personally, I blame Hollywood. I think they turned
most of the women around here into stuck-up bitches. They don't seem to be
as bad in central and northern California, or in New York, or anywhere else
I've been. ...?!?!


-----Original Message-----
From: g'o'tz ohnesorge [mailto:gohnesorge AT lh-computertechnik.de]
Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2001 2:41 AM
To: Global-Scale Distributed Storage Systems
Subject: Re: freenet

Josh wrote:

> That was very helpful. We made a lot of progress...
>
> Thank you
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bram Cohen [mailto:bram AT gawth.com]
> Sent: Friday, August 10, 2001 5:55 PM
> To: Global-Scale Distributed Storage Systems
> Subject: Re: freenet
>
> On Fri, 10 Aug 2001, Josh wrote:
>
> > However, if you guys could tell me if they are using a credit card for a
> > form of identification, I'd appreciate it.
>
> Am I the only one who fell over laughing when they read this?
>
> -Bram Cohen
>
> "Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent"
> -- John Maynard Keynes

Maybe I can help out with a few hints:

a) Credit card fraud makes several times more money change owners than do
bank
raids.

b) There's credit card number generator programs available (on the net, on
BBSs,
among the h4><0r community, wherever ..) that make a seemingly valid CC
number
for you - mostly used to get free access to pr0n sites, I'd guess. The
reason
that this is at all possible is that CC numbers are really not even remotely
secure identification numbers, but random numbers with an identity problem
(the
teacher will draw a smily in my homework book for this clever expression). A
CC
number is a hash of the owners name (or even only length of that), the
expiration date, and a serial number. That they're able to get away with
that
and most other thin
gs that are referred to as security measures in the world of
American business, roots in the widely lamented fact that mathematics is the
best kept secret in the American educational system, even more than how to
avoid
pregnancies. (Sorry for the bashing, nearly all Americans I got to know on
the
net a really well educated and also very smart people, but as a whole the
opposite seems to be available widely enough to allow for commercial
mining.)

c) If one of your main goals, as in Freenet and a bunch of other distributed
systems, is to prevent censorship, and for that reason also ensure that
access
is as anonymous as humanly or mathematically possible, then using a CC
number
that you have to acquire by means of showing your ID card to a commercial
venture known for making their customer information database available for
free
to the governement and for cash to everyone else, can only be perceived as a
hideous attempt at standup comedy.

And there's another story that came to my mind regarding the attitude to
need to
leave your CC number around everywhere, and treat everything as someone
else's
property that you have to pay for over and over at every corner. It's a poem
which most kids in Germany over the past decades had to learn some time,
about a
guy named Mr. Ribbeck of Ribbeck in Havelland:

In short, he had a fruit tree (birnbaum) in his garden, and given the age of
the
poem, those very sweet fruits were newly introduced to the area in what now
is,
I think, northern Poland, and thus probably still quite expensive. This guy
had
a habit of giving those fruits away to kids who came by his house. Some time
he
got old, and knew what would soon happen. He also knew that his son to
inherit
the house and garden would not go on to give fruits away to kids. So he
demanded
that upon his burial, one such fruit was to be placed upon his grave. Some
years
later, a new fruit tree had grown in the grave yard, where everyone could go
and
pick a fruit for free.

Not sure what the message in tha
t could be ..




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