Slashdot Mirror
Cornell Researchers Unveil a Virtual Notary
First time accepted submitter el33thack3r writes "We've all wanted a trustworthy record of an online factoid, whether it's your official employment status, a tweet someone made or the hash of an open-source distribution to protect it from tampering. A group of Cornell researchers have just unveiled a service called Virtual Notary that can serve as a witness to online factoids. The service is useful for inventors who want to timestamp an invention disclosure, for people who are seeking an officially random number selected for a raffle or crypto protocol, for web services that want a record of a user's email address, and for many other use cases. The service is free and the researchers are seeking community input on other online factoids of interest. What would you like notarized online?" The concept is interesting, but some of the items they've chosen as examples seem well documented elsewhere, such as historical exchange rates and stock prices.
Looks like its not ready for prime time... it blows up with
AttributeError at /vnotary/dispatch/emailverify/input/
'module' object has no attribute 'choice'
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
A long time ago, there was a site in the UK which would make a PGP signed timestamp of anything mailed to it (within reason). The site also published the hashes of everything stamped every week just to ensure nothing got tampered with. Of course, it means nothing legally, but as far as I remember, it never got compromised, so in theory, the timestamps it made could be considered usable.
This virtual notary appears to be as secure, with the hashes posted on Twitter.
A factoid is not a fact.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factoid
The only "factoid of interest" is that Slashdot may have editors.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Seems like a great idea but would this actually hold up in court?
The point of a Notary Public is that it's a trusted person representing the government doing the notarizing.
Something this service isn't.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Pure nonsense. And I actually looked at the link this time, not just the /. summary. From the website: You select a factoid that you would like notarized. We check that factoid, create a record of it that you can refer to later, and issue you a cryptographically-signed certificate that attests to that factoid.
That has nothing to do with notarizing. Notarizing is about witnessing and confirming that you (the signer of a document) are who you say you are. It has nothing to do with the the accuracy of the document itself. I could write a deed selling you the Brooklyn Bridge and a notary could perfectly legally notarize it, all they would be doing is affirming that I was the person who signed it. Notarizing something has absolutely nothing to do with confirming that the information contained in the notarized document is accurate. This "service" seems to want to confirm facts, but I don't see anywhere that it manages to confirm who it was that electronically signed something. So it is not notarizing at all.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Easy fix: Timestamp a list of document hashes of both the file and the file's size. For example, MD5 hash, SHA1, SHA2, and SHA3. One has might be forgable, but it will be extremely difficult for someone to make a new document of the same exact size, but have all the hashes match.
Using this method, the timestamper has zero knowledge of what is in the document, not even how big it is. All they can tell is if a subsequent document was the same as a previous one that went through their system.
Am I missing something that makes this idea different from RFC3161?
Ever since the invention of cryptography capable of 'signature', 'virtual notary' has merely been a matter of finding somebody you'd actually trust to be a notary, and then having them sign stuff. If you give them a clock, you can even have 'trusted' timestamps!
The bigger trick, and something that would actually be worth writing home about, is doing this without trusting somebody who almost certainly doesn't deserve it.
Yah well, I created something exactly like this back in 2004 called robonotary.com but the lack of interest was very palpable and I was no longer motivated to pursue it.
(still own the domain).
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... time... to... die...
Actually, no. Bitcoin is simply one of the methods used to record the notary log chain value into a long lived form. Bitcoin isn't central to this in any way.
The methodology is far less compute intensive than the mining methodology in bitcoin. If it weren't it couldn't keep up.
Virtual Notary publishes the hash of the log every time a certificate is issued. They also tweet this value. They could have as well used any other method that leaves a long standing record, even engraving it in metal and handing them out as souvenirs on an hourly basis.
Merely having any given hash validates all prior notary values up to the date it was published. The proof will be in every users hands, as well as community repositories.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Bitcoin is not central to Cornell's system. It is just ONE method of making public the current value of the log entry.
Every holder of a Notary value also validates all prior notary values.
Don't get hung up on the bitcoin part. Its not really germane.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
That's still really useful, you know. For example, suppose you take a photo of some damage when you move into an apartment or something, and want a third party to be able to attest that you took it when you moved in instead of moved out.
As they explain in the FAQ, they can't really attest to the truth of something for obvious reasons, but that doesn't mean that they're only slightly useful.
News for news sounds boring anyway.
It seems to always use an online source. For instance, real estate certification is done using data from Zillow, an online service I did not know before reading that news.
It means it is not real estate certification, but certification of what Zillow says on real estate
Elderly folks & maybe younger singles who want to live -safely- in their own homes longer, even after a spouse passes on, need protection from scammers who visit & try to defraud them out of money, etc.
If they record people who telemarket, show-up on their door steps to sell and/or just won't take no for an answer, in such a way that they recording are uploaded to Virtual Witness or (today) Virtual Notary for a time-stamp, etc., ie, whatever might be needed to make it usable in court, could have it easier to win their law suits, damage claims, or just convince judges (in criminal matters), that what they say happened is what actually happened.
A family of Virtual Witness devices (like black boxes for the home) would monitor / records & securely upload any recordings of concerning incidents (eg, on touch of a button -or- if owner did not press an "All OK" button after answering door, phone, etc.)
Disabled folks (recently, intellectually disabled) may have issues being heard... slow delivery of words or questions of abilities to recall accurately what happened to them.
Virtual Witness may be the way to let many of these people enjoy increased security in their homes, knowing that - if needed - a verified recording would be available to police, courts, their lawyer, etc. when verification is needed of a claim or complaint.
Most of my needs for notarized docs are overseas, where chops, ribbons, big stickers, and all sorts of other bureacratic crap are necessary for validation. I hope these guys are able to get the credibility they need for this project to succeed, but am initially skeptical in light of all the big governments everywhere.
-- Jimtown Kelly
This is about the stupidest thing for inventors.
In most countries other than the U.S., where you have a year from first public disclosure to file for a patent, disclosure automatically nullifies your ability to file for patents.
I thought a "factoid" was supposed to be something that looked like a fact but wasn't, but was a more polite way of saying "a lie that's been pulled out of the void at moments notice but sounds plausable".
http://virtual-notary.org/log/33fe2f36-ea0f-4658-ac5b-7433c4403345/
You heard it here first - anyone else saying the same thing just copied me ;-)