From: Robert Hettinga Subject: DCSB: Ari Juels; Outsourcing MicroMint Coins, and X-Cash for Contingent Financial Instruments Date: Monday, July 19, 1999 12:09 PM The Digital Commerce Society of Boston Presents Dr. Ari Juels Senior Research Scientist RSA Laboratories Security Dynamics, Inc. MicroMint on the Cheap and Executable Financial Instruments Tuesday, August 3rd, 1999 12 - 2 PM The Downtown Harvard Club of Boston One Federal Street, Boston, MA We discuss two technologies that aim to facilitate electronic commerce in distributed environments under minimal assumptions of trust. First, we show how the MicroMint micropayment scheme of Rivest and Shamir can be broken up into a collection of small "puzzles". Distribution of these puzzles enables the minting operation for the scheme to be outsourced to a large group of untrusted computational devices. Additionally, we discuss a cryptographic technique that enables mobile agents to carry digital cash in such a way that they are secure against "pickpocketing". We refer to this technique as "X-cash" or "Executable digital cash". X-cash may also be used as the basis for creating digital financial instruments with flexibly defined properties. The first portion of the talk includes material to appear in the paper "Bread Pudding and Proofs of Work (POWs)" in Communications and Multimedia Security '99. The second portion of the talk draws on the paper "X-cash: Executable Digital Cash", which appeared in Financial Cryptography '98. Both papers are by Markus Jakobsson (Bell Laboratories) and Ari Juels (RSA Laboratories). Dr. Juels received his B.A. in Latin Literature and Mathematics from Amherst College in 1991, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1996. He subsequently joined RSA Laboratories, where he now holds the position of senior research scientist. His research interests span several areas of cryptography, with a special focus on protocols underlying and supporting financial applications. This meeting of the Digital Commerce Society of Boston will be held on Tuesday, August 3, 1999, from 12pm - 2pm at the Downtown Branch of the Harvard Club of Boston, on One Federal Street. The price for lunch is $32.50. This price includes lunch, room rental, various A/V hardware, and the speakers' lunch. The Harvard Club *does* have dress code: jackets and ties for men (and no sneakers or jeans), and "appropriate business attire" (whatever that means), for women. Fair warning: since we purchase these luncheons in advance, we will be unable to refund the price of your lunch if the Club finds you in violation of the dress code. We need to receive a company check, or money order, (or, if we *really* know you, a personal check) payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", by Saturday, July 31st, or you won't be on the list for lunch. Checks payable to anyone else but The Harvard Club of Boston will have to be sent back. Checks should be sent to Robert Hettinga, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02131. Again, they *must* be made payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", in the amount of $32.50. Please include your e-mail address so that we can send you a confirmation If anyone has questions, or has a problem with these arrangements (We've had to work with glacial A/P departments more than once, for instance), please let us know via e-mail, and we'll see if we can work something out. We are actively searching for future speakers. If you are in Boston on the first Tuesday of the month, and you are a principal in digital commerce, and would like to make a presentation to the Society, please send e-mail to the DCSB Program Commmittee, care of Robert Hettinga, . For more information about the Digital Commerce Society of Boston, send "info dcsb" in the body of a message to . If you want to subscribe to the DCSB e-mail list, send "subscribe dcsb" in the body of a message to . We look forward to seeing you there! Cheers, Robert Hettinga Moderator, The Digital Commerce Society of Boston ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "dcsb-request@ai.mit.edu" with one line of text: "help".