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Date:      Sat, 20 Feb 1999 18:55:36 -0500 (EST)
From:      Vince Vielhaber <vev@michvhf.com>
To:        freebsd-java@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: somewhat new to java questions
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.05.9902201839310.23914-100000@paprika.michvhf.com>
In-Reply-To: <ML-3.3.919537139.729.patl@asimov>

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On Sat, 20 Feb 1999 patl@phoenix.volant.org wrote:

> > On Fri, 19 Feb 1999, Mike Jeays wrote:
> >
> > The dilemna I'm looking at (which is solved with Java) is something
> > that will safely take credit card info and move it to another machine.
> > While it's true that I can get a secure web server and a certificate, 
> > lets face it.. Someone's smokin dope if they think a new business is
> > gonna have the cash and overhead to implement such a thing.  My choices
> > were the linux e-commerce thing for $100 (which I almost did but the
> > folks at RedHat couldn't seem to send me a copy of the license), going
> > illegal and running apache-ssl without the license, getting the license
> >  from RSA (at US$10K) or taking the advise of an old professor that had
> 
> Stronghold isn't nearly that expensive (I think it's around US$1K now.)
> It's basicly a fully licensed Apache with SSL.  http://www.c2.net/
> And it's a tax-deductable business expense.  (If you value your time
> as low as $25/hr, you'd still need to be able to develop your app in
> less than 40 hours to break even; even without counting the tax deduction.)

Plus the certificate.  For about $125 you can get the Thawte, but that's
not taken at face value.

> 
> 
> > a question that we were to always ask ourselves before answering, "Can
> > I do it better?".  The only palletable answer was, "Yes, I can do it
> > better".  So I wrote a java applet that uses noone's copyrighted, 
> > patented, pay-me-to-use-it encryption schemes and appears to be secure
> > enuf to use.  Right now the only requirement is that Netscape 4.5 be
> > used. One day I hope to be able to release it so everyone can benefit.
> 
> What encryption schemes does it use?  And what do you do about customers
> that might not want to, or might not be able to run Java applets?

Imagine a deck of cards.  Write one piece of info on each card.  Then
play games with the values (randomly) on each card.  No two cards are to
be treated the same way.  Now add another deck with random values of
meaningless data.  Now shuffle the spots off of it.  Now play with the
values again on each card individually.  Shuffle and send to the host
machine.  The games played with each value throughout the entire process
is based off of other values encountered along the way.  This is actually
a rather generic description, I wasn't anywhere near this simple in
the process.  I was thinking of MY creditcard as I wrote it!

> 
> Personally, I wouldn't knowingly trust my credit card number to anything
> that hadn't been thoroughly reviewed by the crypto wonks...

I would hope that noone would knowingly be that free and careless with
their creditcard info.  The sad fact of the matter is that too many
people are.  I offer three ways to pay for a purchase: the Java applet
(which is my first preference), picking up the phone and calling it in
and using an unsecured form.  Note, the phone method is available 24
hours a day.

The last thing I'd ever want to do would be to aid in the demise of
e-commerce.  Too many have too much at stake.

Vince.
-- 
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Vince Vielhaber -- KA8CSH   email: vev@michvhf.com   flame-mail: /dev/null
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