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.

Comments

Re:Reminds me of the old UK Timestamper

[heypete]

For those who are interested, the service you're referring to is likely http://www.itconsult.co.uk/stamper.htm.

Re:Notaries

[EminGünSirer]

The Internet has really changed the game here. What does a trusted person mean in a global context? More importantly, what exactly is the global entity that would declare a person to be trusted? If you've ever had to deal with international notarization, you'll know that the best that the current system can offer is a system of irregular local standards, glued together through Apostilles on dead trees. These are at best inefficient, though archaic would probably be a more accurate description.

Changing that landscape starts with providing alternatives to the public so that your Joe/Jane Lawmaker can see what is possible and change the laws to match the new technological capabilities.

Re:I'd use blind signatures

[EvanED]

This is really only useful as proof that you knew something that's resistant to guessing lots of times (Like some specific description of an event, a long private key, etc).

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.