4 ms·

Am I the only one that doesn't think this idea is particularly new or interesting? My cryptography professor in undergrad talked about the idea of hashing your

by pmorici 13y ago

Am I the only one that doesn't think this idea is particularly new or interesting? My cryptography professor in undergrad talked about the idea of hashing your work and publishing the hash in the classifieds of a newspaper as a publicly verifiable way to timestamp it. That was like 10 years ago and I don't think the idea was new at the time.

steren 13y ago
We don't pretend the idea is new (although Ralf did not find prior scientific works talking about this). We just want it to spread since it is simple and cheap.
- brixon 13y ago
  Ralf did not check the classifieds.
- pmorici 13y ago
  A quick Google shows there is a good deal of prior published work on the idea of time stamping with hashes. The Wikipedia articles on the topic lists published references as early as 1991 and notes that the general idea itself dates to 1660 when Robert Hooke of Hooke's law fame published an anagram in a newspaper to timestamp his discovery. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_timestamping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_timestamping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping#History On another note, is using a bank transaction as a means of publishing even a good idea? The banks I use only keep recent transactions available online, between 6 months to two years. So, you would have to print out your bank statement save it and present that as the proof which isn't particularly convincing. With a newspaper anyone can go find a copy of that newspaper at a library and independently verify it. They won't be able to get your private bank records w/o a lot of hassle.
kidprogrammer 13y ago
Citing the original document "Der Klassiker für diese Methode ist, den Hash-Wert des Inhalts einer Datei in einer gedruckten Zeitung zu veröffentlichen. " author prefers the bank over newspaper due to lower costs + amount of time .

by pmorici 13y ago

steren 13y ago

We don't pretend the idea is new (although Ralf did not find prior scientific works talking about this). We just want it to spread since it is simple and cheap.

brixon 13y ago
Ralf did not check the classifieds.
pmorici 13y ago
A quick Google shows there is a good deal of prior published work on the idea of time stamping with hashes. The Wikipedia articles on the topic lists published references as early as 1991 and notes that the general idea itself dates to 1660 when Robert Hooke of Hooke's law fame published an anagram in a newspaper to timestamp his discovery. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_timestamping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_timestamping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping#History On another note, is using a bank transaction as a means of publishing even a good idea? The banks I use only keep recent transactions available online, between 6 months to two years. So, you would have to print out your bank statement save it and present that as the proof which isn't particularly convincing. With a newspaper anyone can go find a copy of that newspaper at a library and independently verify it. They won't be able to get your private bank records w/o a lot of hassle.

kidprogrammer 13y ago

Citing the original document "Der Klassiker für diese Methode ist, den Hash-Wert des Inhalts einer Datei in einer gedruckten Zeitung zu veröffentlichen. " author prefers the bank over newspaper due to lower costs + amount of time .