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Drug cartels use dollar bill serial numbers as random keys for delivery receipts
- gcb0 7y agoSo it is just a way to pick a (random) number that will be shared and compared between three parties?
- kijin 7y agoIt would seem so, with a trusted fourth party (the US treasury) acting as the RNG. But after the initial exchange, another random element is generated: the bill is torn in half, so if you want to forge your part, you'll have to tear it in just the right way to match the other part. This is probably going to be even more difficult than forging dollar bills in the first place.
- gscott 7y agoThat's good for the treasury taking that money out of circulation is a gift to the government of $1.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoHow is it a gift to the government? The undamaged dollar isn't a liability of the government. It's a gift to everyone who holds USD by virtue of slightly reducing the money supply, therefore slightly increasing the purchasing power of the dollars that still exist. A gift in the amount of $1 divided by the total number of dollars.
- adventured 7y ago> How is it a gift to the government? The parent is wrong that it's a gift of $1 to the Treasury. It is a gift to the government however, as you note in your own explanation. It just increased the government's USD purchasing power. The US Government is an epic scale spender of USD (millions of employees, $4.x trillion budget).
- perl4ever 7y agoIf $1 is destroyed, that should make everyone who possesses dollars collectively $1 richer, all else being equal. The government does not possess all wealth.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoThe government is a large spender of USD. It also issues a lot of USD-denominated debt; deflating the dollar makes that worse. If the government's dollar liabilities exceed its dollar assets, the impact of destroying a dollar on the government's financial health is negative.
- pawelmurias 7y agoThe government hold the power to print money. They can print a fresh 1$ to replace the torn one.
- rags2riches 7y agoOutstanding currency is a liability on the balance sheet of the issuer. The trick with issuing fiat currency is that you can redeem that liability with another, just the same.
- 13of40 7y agoJust getting the information to forge half the bill is hard enough: Either you have the original, in which case you don't need to fake it, or you have the other half, in which case you've already compromised the bad guy.
- dhdidhdu 7y agoNot for the Treasury, who issues coins but not bills, but for the Fed. Every bill is a liability on the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. Destroy the bill, destroy the liability. That the Fed doesn’t know you destroyed it [0] is irrelevant. If you destroyed a coin that would be a “gift” to the Treasury, except the metal and cost of production to replace the coin might be larger than the worth of the coin (I.e. you destroy an old copper cent) [0] dollar bills circulate like mad and are accounted for every time a bank gets a hold of them (often, due to vending machines, strippers, and diner waitresses). If a bill stops showing up, you can assign a high degree of probability that it will never show up again. Every one bill is probably long tailed, but money is fungible, so who cares if any one bill ends up re-appearing?
- anticensor 7y agoIn high-inflation economies like Turkey, they do full emission replacements periodically to avoid disappeared currency issue. > Destroy the bill, destroy the liability Except it is illegal to randomly destroy a banknote (coins are different).
- crankylinuxuser 7y ago> Except it is illegal to randomly destroy a banknote (coins are different). We're talking about drug dealers and other major crime perpetrators... And you're thinking they care about the crime of 'destroying a bank note'? I think it'd be safe to chalk that up to "I don't think they care".
- anigbrowl 7y agoSo what?
- lonelappde 7y agoIt's a one-time pad . Ripping the bill makes it unable to be reused, so two different drops can't claim to both deserve to receive from the courier.
- p1mrx 7y agoSo a dollar bill is an inexpensive (on the scale of crime) sheet of paper pre-printed with a unique number that's somewhat difficult to forge. If you rip it up, that number won't be used again. How are they making use of this feature set? I'd like to see a diagram with arrows and stuff.
- bproctor 7y agoTook me a bit to understand, courier doesn't have the bill, the drop does. Boss: "Courier, deliver this money to <address>, code is 12345678" Courier: at <address>, "Hey Drop, what is the code?" Drop: "Code is 12345678" Courier: "That's correct, Here's you're money" Drop: Tears bill in half and hands part with serial number to Courier as proof
- cpeterso 7y agoWhy would the Drop need to retain half the serial number? They have received the goods.
- yesbabyyes 7y agoI'm not sure the drop retains half the serial number? GP claims the drop rips the bill in half, and hands the part with the (full, I seem to recall US dollar bills have the serial number on the bottom left) serial number to the courier. The courier can prove they delivered to the right drop, and the bill being ripped in half will ensure it won't be used again.
- RaceWon 7y ago> I seem to recall US dollar bills have the serial number on the bottom left Our money (US Currency) has two (of the same) serial numbers on each bill; one on the lower left and one on the upper right for dollar bills. Other denominations also have two; one on each side of the front of the bill, however they are in opposite places i.e. upper left, and lower right--at least the current bills in my wallet are that way.
- 7y ago
- brownbat 7y agoHow many drops tried to claim they didn't get any money or that the courier forged a receipt before they invented physical nonrepudiation? And it's nonrepudiation without identity, the identifying info is destroyed in the transaction. The courier could just take a cell phone photo of the drop, but no one wants that evidence trail. One time use serials are perfect. And despite some characterizations, seems to me like uniqueness is more important than randomness here, which is good, because serial numbers are better at that.
- onetimemanytime 7y agoMy guess is that a lot more is involved. IMO the dollar bill thing is just one of the pieces, cartels will not hand $100 Million to strangers based on just one piece of info. This is probably to rule out someone denying drugs got delivered. But enforcement is still the best tool
- heavenlyblue 7y agoYou can’t deny delivery of drugs this way.
- diminoten 7y agoThe randomness is generated by the tear of the dollar itself, isn't it?
- dorfsmay 7y agoTearing the bill assure uniqueness. I'm not sure randomness is important here.
- brownbat 7y agoYou could generate a key that way, but then we'd expect pre-distribution of each side. That would help confirm identities to both sides - if the courier and drop don't know each other, they just match the bill halves before dealing. As I understand it though, they're tearing on site. So I think they're mainly trying to prevent the drop from stealing the money (claiming the courier never showed), and prevent the courier from stealing the money (claiming the drop has it). If C steals, D can now say, "I still have the Boss's whole dollar, why didn't C come take it?" If D steals, C can say "I have part of the dollar, proving delivery." The boss is also trying to simplify this protocol, make sure low level drug offenders don't have to do a complex ledger entry during the commission of a major crime. The tear might be purely symbolic, to make it look more symmetric to both parties, who may or may not have read Schneier. Or... the tear could be preventing the D from ambushing C during the exit. Once the bill is torn, it would be hard to claim the courier never showed, even if they could get both parts of it back.
- onetimemanytime 7y agoIn other words, the best delivery receipt is still a bounty on your head--and entire family line--if you try to get cute. But this serves to identify the "cowboys"
- Fjolsvith 7y agoIt keeps the honest criminals honest.
- PeterisP 7y agoThe key part here seems to be protection against all kinds of message interception attacks - if I listen in on the conversation and hear that the code is 12345678, then I can't easily create a dollar bill with that code on it, and probably even the FBI can't do it quickly enough for it to be useful.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y agoYeah, I think the thing that confused me originally is that the headline talks about the serial numbers as "random keys", which to me implied something related to requiring the properties of randomness (e.g. evenly distributed). But they're not random keys at all, they're just guaranteed to be unique. Uniqueness and randomness are totally different aspects, one that often trips up some developers who think that UUIDs (which are guaranteed to be unique) are also guaranteed to be random (not necessarily).
- fisherjeff 7y agoBut the randomness of the serial numbers is very important here too: If someone could predict upcoming keys, the system could be broken.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago> But the randomness of the serial numbers... That sentence is an oxymoron. They are called "serial" numbers because they are applied in series, i.e. one right after the other. The randomness is not important. The person setting up the drop already has the dollar bill in hand. The important thing is that the bill can't be duplicated.
- nieve 7y agoA random selection from a set of in-series numbers is still random, it's just got a potentially known range.
- qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
- mysterypie 7y agoAnyone know what document the article the quoting? And what does DTMLO stand for? My web searches revealed nothing.
- hcs 7y agoI'm guessing Drug Trafficking/Money Laundering Organization. Yup, looks like it's more commonly written DTO/MLO.
- carrozo 7y agoBanksy uses a similar system to authenticate his work: https://boingboing.net/2019/03/31/di-faced-note.html https://boingboing.net/2019/03/31/di-faced-note.html
- gruez 7y ago>this is a great piece of cryptographic engineering: faking a Banksy cert involves matching the tear precisely, and also requires that a would-be counterfeiter know what was written on the other half of the note, which is stored at Pest Control and is not made available. 1. Is a piece of paper torn in half really cryptography? Wikipedia says: >Cryptography or cryptology is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties called adversaries I don't see how this is any different than any other anti-counterfeiting schemes that uses a hard to duplicate physical object. 2. I get how the tear might be used for authentication purposes (hard to duplicate), but what's the point of validating the contents on the other half of the note? If you matched the public half the note exactly, it's not like the private half will help you authenticate it.
- nsajko 7y ago> 1. Is a piece of paper torn in half really cryptography? Cryptography is not just about confidentiality, ensuring authenticity is also cryptography. > If you matched the public half the note exactly The point is that it is hard to duplicate even the "public half" of the note.
- gruez 7y ago>Cryptography is not just about confidentiality, ensuring authenticity is also cryptography. So by that logic, a wax seal is also cryptography?
- crankylinuxuser 7y agoI'd argue that a wax seal was more a crypto signature (md5, sha, etc) than it was a cipher of the text enclosed. Of course, reading by breaking means armed thugs killed you. But we'll leave that analogy aside!
- dpacmittal 7y agoThis has been done in India for since forever.
- iamgopal 7y agoAngadiya ( havala ) or cash transfer has been done like this since ages, and most of them are from not so educated background, but very rich doing this. Interesting thing is when Bitcoin was at its pick, they adopted Bitcoin as a currency transaction quite quickly.
- jancsika 7y agoI'd love to see a detailed list of the features of this dollar exchange system that make it preferable to any of the relevant software systems currently in existence. My guess is that such a list can generalize to HCI and help reveal some of the garbage assumptions behind a lot of common software (esp. cryptography-related software).
- mongol 7y agoI don't understand...
- JudgeWapner 7y agoyou have enough drugs on you to land you in jail for multiple decades. you're scheduled to exchange them for cash with some unknown person. you meet the person, but how do you know it's really the person or the police or an unauthorized buyer? Well, your boss tells you the buyer will have a dollar bill with serial number 123-XYZ. You meet up, he produces the bill with correct serial, so you commence business.
- zrobotics 7y agoAnd after the drop-off, the courier retains half of the bill w/ a serial # as proof that the delivery did occur. This prevents the buyer from later claiming "the delivery never occurred, the courier must have stolen the drugs/contraband". If that claim is made, the courier can produce the note as proof of delivery.
- lrem 7y agoAs portrayed in the 1997 Polish comedy Killer.
- wrs 7y agoI can’t find any direct evidence now, but I remember hearing (probably in the 80’s) that one of the ideas suggested for assigning Ethernet MAC addresses was to use dollar bill serial numbers, to avoid having to set up and run a central registry forever. However, it’s technically illegal to destroy currency and the cost of $1 per address would eventually become uneconomic.
- eb0la 7y agoBack un college se used as fandom seeds the first word and page number of a dictionary someone left behind long ago.... SSL certificate passwords were easy to remember as long as nobody removed the bookmark no that useless dictionary.