[Cryptography] Using the NFC chip of the Passport to do Proof-of-Work

other.arkitech other.arkitech at protonmail.com
Sat May 9 12:48:42 EDT 2020




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‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Friday, May 8, 2020 4:04 AM, Ángel <angel at crypto.16bits.net> wrote:

> On 2020-05-03 at 20:46 +0200, Jan Lindemann wrote:
>
> > I came up with a funny idea on how to create an egalitarian POW
> > mechanism that would let everyone have the same or a very similar
> > "hashing rate".
> > To keep it short, it uses the active authentication feature of the NFC
> > chip contained within passports.
> > This feature consists in having a private key contained within the
> > chip signing a challenge to prove that it hasn't been cloned.
> > So my proposal is to use this signing functionality instead of using
> > the typical SHA256 or Scrypt hashing algorithms.
> > Passports have likely a similar singing rate, and people are likely to
> > only have one passport.
> > More details can be found here if you are interested:
> > https://medium.com/@janmoritz_48488/using-the-nfc-chip-of-the-passport-to-do-proof-of-work-b77e1a5343a1
>

How can it be verified that a signature has been produced by a private key that is stored in a password? Is there any trustable service that provides such a world-wide service?
If it happens to exist it would centralize the system.

This method is equivalent to having a group of trusted people that select which public keys are eligible to mine, the different Govs who generate the passports.

It is a bright idea though, mindstorming to improve POW, : )
thanks


> Solar Lottery, with your employer making you surrender your passport to
> them so they can benefit from it?
>
> Ultimately, while your scheme should work for [normal] people, it fails
> where governments may be involved, as they could mine using 'fake
> passports' given they handle the passport master keys, ultimately moving
> the key to a physical passport if needed.
>
> [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Lottery
>
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