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Yikes - working on getting it back up now. I guess load balancing for our www site needs to move up in priority. In the meantime, you can see much of the same

Yikes - working on getting it back up now. I guess load balancing for our www site needs to move up in priority. In the meantime, you can see much of the same info on our AngelList page: https://angel.co/snowshoe-stamp https://angel.co/snowshoe-stamp

ccmoberg 14y ago
Should be back up now. Sorry for the inconvenience.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
Nice concept, is the dot pattern secret? Which is to say is this something you 'train' between the app and the stamp or is it programmed? And does it do a 'multi-touch' type stamp or are you doing sequences? And if the latter I'm guessing you can do a sequence that fingers can't and thus avoid 'faking' the stamp manually. All in all very clever. Not sure what the use case is though.
- ccmoberg 14y ago
  Great questions. Our basic stamps have dot patterns that are not obscured and are static on each stamp. They are precision milled out of the aluminum stamp body, and, thus, they are still VERY hard to spoof because the location of the observed dots needs to be precise down to the pixel resolution of the phone. You can't spoof them with you fingers. The nice thing about these stamps is that they are nothing more than a solid block of aluminum - no circuitry whatsoever. You can run them through a dishwasher or an autoclave - great for food service and medical applications. We also have more secure "dynamic" stamps wherein the capacitive touch points are modulated in sequence amongst an array of potential contact points. These are still in the prototype stage, but we get a lot of requests for them, so may be looking to launch this new product line in the spring. Finally, as for use cases - we can do many of the things people are currently trying to use NFC, QR Codes and/or GPS gating to authenticate. We already have apps that do retail loyalty, coupons, and micro-payments launched on the platform. We also have developers working on apps to authenticate EMRs (electronic medical records) and industrial systems maintenance. Finally, we won the TechCrunch DisruptSF Hackathon back in September by using the stamp as the authentication step for a webservice actuated door lock (article: http://snow.sh/ack http://snow.sh/ack)
  - phasetransition 14y ago
    Very much like the idea, and am definitely interested. My pre-question qualifier: most of the use cases that immediately spring to mind for have the user holding an authenticating block, and not the touchscreen device. Security question for the use cases where that would matter. What is to prevent someone from making an impression mold and then using a technique like lost wax casting to quickly generate a copy? As a materials scientist, this is the first thing I thought of. Cheers and Kudos, -p
    - ccmoberg 14y ago
      Thanks for your feedback! Responses: "My pre-question qualifier: most of the use cases that immediately spring to mind for have the user holding an authenticating block, and not the touchscreen device." -Could you say a little more about the use cases you are thinking of? Who do you consider to be the "user"? Most of our targeted use cases involve transactions where many smartphone users need to interact with a single, centralized system, person or installation. For example, our loyalty apps are downloaded by a retailer's customers, and then credits for purchases are added to their apps via a stamp placed at the retailer's point of sale. We consider both the customers and the retailer to be "users", though. As for the security question, the capacitive touch points are embedded in a low capacitance elastomer, so physical duplication (e.g. casting) without destroying the stamp isn't an option. We also have other optional authentication layers (GPS-gating transactions to a stamp's known lat & lon, time-gating transactions to a stores hours of service, etc.) that would make even a duplicated stamp much harder to use. Remember, its not hard to make a functional copy of the mag stripe on your credit card. I would argue it is much easier to do that than it is to spoof one of our stamps. Further, we don't print the "secure key" (the stamp point coordinates) on the front of our stamps, but your credit card number is plastered across the front of your plastic . . .
      - ynniv 14y ago
        its not hard to make a functional copy of the mag stripe on your credit card They aren't expected to be secure, so the consequences for being caught doing so are immense, and the industry around them has been dealing with this issue since its inception. We have newer technology that supersedes magnetic stripes for secure transactions.

ccmoberg 14y ago

Should be back up now. Sorry for the inconvenience.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

Nice concept, is the dot pattern secret? Which is to say is this something you 'train' between the app and the stamp or is it programmed? And does it do a 'multi-touch' type stamp or are you doing sequences? And if the latter I'm guessing you can do a sequence that fingers can't and thus avoid 'faking' the stamp manually. All in all very clever. Not sure what the use case is though.

ccmoberg 14y ago
Great questions. Our basic stamps have dot patterns that are not obscured and are static on each stamp. They are precision milled out of the aluminum stamp body, and, thus, they are still VERY hard to spoof because the location of the observed dots needs to be precise down to the pixel resolution of the phone. You can't spoof them with you fingers. The nice thing about these stamps is that they are nothing more than a solid block of aluminum - no circuitry whatsoever. You can run them through a dishwasher or an autoclave - great for food service and medical applications. We also have more secure "dynamic" stamps wherein the capacitive touch points are modulated in sequence amongst an array of potential contact points. These are still in the prototype stage, but we get a lot of requests for them, so may be looking to launch this new product line in the spring. Finally, as for use cases - we can do many of the things people are currently trying to use NFC, QR Codes and/or GPS gating to authenticate. We already have apps that do retail loyalty, coupons, and micro-payments launched on the platform. We also have developers working on apps to authenticate EMRs (electronic medical records) and industrial systems maintenance. Finally, we won the TechCrunch DisruptSF Hackathon back in September by using the stamp as the authentication step for a webservice actuated door lock (article: http://snow.sh/ack http://snow.sh/ack)
- phasetransition 14y ago
  Very much like the idea, and am definitely interested. My pre-question qualifier: most of the use cases that immediately spring to mind for have the user holding an authenticating block, and not the touchscreen device. Security question for the use cases where that would matter. What is to prevent someone from making an impression mold and then using a technique like lost wax casting to quickly generate a copy? As a materials scientist, this is the first thing I thought of. Cheers and Kudos, -p
  - ccmoberg 14y ago
    Thanks for your feedback! Responses: "My pre-question qualifier: most of the use cases that immediately spring to mind for have the user holding an authenticating block, and not the touchscreen device." -Could you say a little more about the use cases you are thinking of? Who do you consider to be the "user"? Most of our targeted use cases involve transactions where many smartphone users need to interact with a single, centralized system, person or installation. For example, our loyalty apps are downloaded by a retailer's customers, and then credits for purchases are added to their apps via a stamp placed at the retailer's point of sale. We consider both the customers and the retailer to be "users", though. As for the security question, the capacitive touch points are embedded in a low capacitance elastomer, so physical duplication (e.g. casting) without destroying the stamp isn't an option. We also have other optional authentication layers (GPS-gating transactions to a stamp's known lat & lon, time-gating transactions to a stores hours of service, etc.) that would make even a duplicated stamp much harder to use. Remember, its not hard to make a functional copy of the mag stripe on your credit card. I would argue it is much easier to do that than it is to spoof one of our stamps. Further, we don't print the "secure key" (the stamp point coordinates) on the front of our stamps, but your credit card number is plastered across the front of your plastic . . .
    - ynniv 14y ago
      its not hard to make a functional copy of the mag stripe on your credit card They aren't expected to be secure, so the consequences for being caught doing so are immense, and the industry around them has been dealing with this issue since its inception. We have newer technology that supersedes magnetic stripes for secure transactions.