The Security of Online with spyware and malware, information which

could be different from the one typed by the user

Payments into his web-browser (because it can be modified
(AxiomaticTokenizer by malware, on-the-fly).

and One Time Tokens) For this mechanism to be truly safe, the tokens
by George Hara must depend on the payment information. The
process is straight forward. The user types into
The security of online payments is today under the device all the information which is necessary
heavy attack and things are only getting worse to make a payment. Then, the device generates a
as more and more people start making payments token, a text which the user can type into a web-
over the Internet. Threats like spyware and phish- browser on a computer which is connected to the
ing destroy user confidence in online services who Internet; a token has about 170 characters. The
are expected to “do something”. token is unique every time the user makes a pay-
ment, and is created in a deterministic way using
Consider the classical way of making an online cryptographic operations (hashing), so someone
payment: a user creates an account with a service who intercepts it can NOT use it (again) to make
provider, and he authenticates himself into his ac- a different payment, like they can in the case of
count with the account name and a password. The passwords.
problem here is that the computer which sends
the password to the service could be infected with The service verifies that the action requested by
spyware, spyware which could intercept and send the user was indeed initiated by him, by using the
the password to a thief who could later log in the payment information from the token sent by the
user’s account and steal all the money. user, to generate a token in the same way. If the
two tokens are the same, only the owner of the
This problem could be solved with a dedicated account could have sent the user token, so the
portable device which can access the Internet, service can confidently execute the requested ac-
device which would not allow users to install and tion.
run other applications. Such a device could not,
in theory, contain spyware. But software is buggy
and it can never be trusted 100%, particularly not The one thing which makes it impossible for any-
when the amount of code required to make such a one, other than the user who owns the account
device work, is huge. and for the service, to generate the correct token is
the user’s password (which is now called a shared
But there is another way, way which is critical for secret because it’s known only by the user and by
the user who means business, the user who man- the service).
ages a lot of money online. By separating the au-
thentication process from the communication pro-
cess, maximum security is reached. The dedicated The shared secret is sent by the user to the ser-
device no longer needs to be connected to the In- vice, when the user account is created, also using
ternet, it simply has to produce the authentication cryptographic operations (asymmetric encryption),
information which the user can send to the service in a way which makes it impossible for anyone to
together with the request to execute a certain ac- intercept it. After this, the shared secret is never
tion in his name / account. sent to the service, like passwords are, but only
used to generate tokens, by both the user and by
Currently, there are such devices, like CryptoCard, the service. The way tokens are generated makes
but their problem is that they generate a token it impossible for anyone to extract the shared se-
which is not dependent on the payment informa- cret. My original intent was to develop a complex
tion and can therefore be used to authenticate solution, using full asymmetric cryptography (en-
whatever information leaves a computer infected cryption and signatures), which would cover all the
technical sides of an online transaction (not neces-
sarily a payment). The problem of such a solution
is that it’s just too complex for generalized use.
From the need to simplify and generalize the use
of secure online payments, AxiomaticTokenizer
was born. It is a small application written in HTML
and JavaScript, and is therefore highly portable,
running on all major web-browsers, on various op-
erating systems, either on desktop computers or
on PDAs. AxiomaticTokenizer is an open source
solution, and at about 80 KB can be peer reviewed
in several hours using a simple text editor.
A major win for this simplified solution is that users
only need to know their passphrase. A single pass-
phrase is enough for all services and accounts,
because the shared secret is not the passphrase
itself, but a hash of it, and therefore no service
can know the shared secret for any other service
or account. Users don’t need to store key pairs,
signed documents, encrypted documents, docu-
ments which need to be backed-up, documents
which could be lost (and money along them) or
forcefully revealed to thieves.
For users, AxiomaticTokenizer provides a simple,
standardized user interface for making secure
payments. For service providers, integration with
the token standard is simple and can be done with
ease. In fact, since AxiomaticTokenizer is released
into the public domain, it can be modify in any way
to fit the requirements of each service.
Simplicity, standardization of user interface and
safety are the key features which make Axiomat-
icTokenizer the ideal solution for the generalized
use of highly secure payments online, and as it is
being improved with translation support and more
user friendly functionality, it can only reach a wider
and wider audience. You can test AxiomaticToken-
izer at
http://www.gardenerofthoughts.org/ideas/emoney/axiomatictokenizer.htm
Who Is Crowne Gold?
Why should all gold investors learn more
about this digital gold company?
1. After a 2002 gold seizure the IRS dropped
all charges of a tax evasion scheme, due to
the fact that 95% of their clients are not US
citizens
2. The government was forced to settle this
case due to the courts ruling that Crowne
Gold was not a IMTB.
3. Issued a full compliance for being a gold
and silver broker thus allowing customers
system wide exchanges of their holding be-
tween accounts. This medium of exchange
is legally NOT a currency, this is a form of
exchange between commodity holders.
4. Owns a mint that will send one troy ounce
gold medallions for Crowne Mint to clients
who request their physical gold holdings.
5. Maintains redundant server operations in
secure commerce friendly jurisdictions.
6. The Crowne Mint issues the digital gold for
exchange as well as the medallions and bars
for physical purchase. (Their new 50 troy
ounce silver bar is impeccable.)
7. Offers account holders the Odyssey ac-
cess token third party verification device for
account access.
8. Client gold is subject to monthly audit by
both U.S. certified public accountants and in-
ternationally certified accountants.