I think I have to agree agree with bitcoinbear. Apparently,
the story behind the whitepapers has a lot of inconsistences. Why would an incorrect whitepaper be on the CryptoNote website especially if it cannot be validated by the published public key of its author? However, the most important issue is not the whitepaper v2 but the v1, which has the irrelevant references that are not even used in the text. And those particular references create "Time Machine" effect the OP is blaming CN for.
I’ve decided to follow the steps of the previous researchers to try and find the original CryptoNote whitepaper v1. Originally, it was found on the Tor website that apparently had been previously used by CryptoNote:
http://ol346fucnsjru223.onion/.
TL;DR
It is likely that both CN whitepapers on CryptoNote website are forged. It is likely that the genuine v.2 is on bytecoin.org, while the genuine v.1 is on Tor CryptoNote website (ol346fucnsjru223.onion). It is possible that the whitepapers have been copied line by line with a couple of extra mistakes as in the v.1 case. The references that are inconsistent with the v.1 content are not used in the text and might have been inserted to confuse the potential researchers.This TOR website
has already been discussed . It contains CryptoNote whitepaper v.1 dated back December 2012. What I don't understand is that why nobody has attempted to check the whitepaper on this dark web website before. Let's take a thorough look at what TOR conceals.
This is a one-page website that briefly explains CryptoNote technology. It also hosts whitepaper v.1 along with the signature and Saberhagen's public key. Firstly, you
can validate the whitepaper on this website with the published public key.
Moreover, the public keys on bytecoin.org, cryptonote.org, and ol346fucnsjru223.onion, are all the same.
Based on the uniformity across the public keys, I assume that it is likely that the whitepaper from the Tor website is genuine. Let's have a look inside. The internal PDF signatures of the Tor whitepaper and of the one found on the CryptoNote website are almost the same. They differ slightly in size just like two conflicting whitepapers v2.
The interesting part is that the serial numbers on both certificates are the same.
However, the SHA1 digest shows that there is something fishy about these two signatures and they were not created with the same certificate which in turn may indicate an attempt at forgery.
Let's compare the references of the two whitepapers. As we can see, the reference lists differ significantly. The CN deep web whitepaper is on the left, while the CN whitepaper from the official web site is on the right:
A brief analysis shows that the two lists differ by 7 links. The CryptoNote website version has those links, but they are not used in the text. The Tor whitepaper doesn't have those references. One of the unused references in CryptoNote whitepaper points to a public discussion that took place in 2013 while the original whitepaper was published in 2012. One possible explanation is that somebody might have inserted those references so that the whitepaper looked non-legit.
A quick text comparison shows that the two texts do differ from one another. Expectedly, the reference numbers are almost completely different everywhere in the text.
However, there are a few more inconsistencies. On the next screenshot you see the difference in "difficulty" spelling in the same passage of the two whitepapers. The "new text" stands for CryptoNote official web site whitepaper, while the "old text" is the way it appears on Tor website.
On a side note: if you copy the word "difficulty" from the Tor whitepaper and paste it into a text editor you'll get the "di_culty" as a result. As far as I understand, "fi" letters combination is badly interpreted by latex compiler and is replaced in PDF by a special character that looks almost the same as these two letters but can't be copied.
You can find the same mistake on other pages.
The only possible explanation for this discrepancy is that somebody has copied the text line by line and failed to correct certain words. Apparently, the "author" of one of the texts did not have the .tex source of the genuine version of the whitepaper. Which whitepaper has these mistakes while the other doesn't? The one found on CryptoNote website,
which leads me to a conclusion that it was forged.Let's check the XMP properties. They are exactly as they should be (TOR — first, clear web — second)
Tor website whitepaper has the correct dates and the used version of latex compiler existed in 2012. The one found on the CryptoNote official website contains improper XMP tags.
And, finally, if the internal watermark is Saberhagen's actual signature, there should be one in whitepaper v.1. There is no watermark on whitepaper v.1 from the CryptoNote official website, but the one on Tor contains the same watermark as the Bytecoin's whitepaper v.2. Here it is, in the very same place.
It exactly corresponds with the three van Saberhagen's public keys (on all the websites), and the watermark in the whitepaper v.2 from bytecoin.org, which is likely to be genuine.
All of the facts mentioned above lead me to the conclusion that the genuine whitepaper v.1 is on the Tor CryptoNote website and not on the official web site as was largely discussed above.
Results1. In line with [ur=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=740112.msg8409063#msg8409063]the previous research on inconsistencies in whitepaper v.2[/url], there is the whitepaper "CryptoNote v.1" that differs from the one published on the CryptoNote official website.
2. The genuine whitepaper v.1 is likely to be on the Tor website. Taking into account all the mistakes in the compromised version of v.1, I assume that this whitepaper has been copied line by line with the exception of the watermark.
3. The genuine whitepaper v.2 is likely to be on Bytecoin.org
4. Since both versions of the genuine whitepaper are consistent with the declared timelines and hold van Saberhagen's public key as the watermark, one can guess that
both whitepapers on the CryptoNote official web site are likely to be forged and do not correspond to the actual CryptoNote whitepaper.
5. The public keys on Bytecoin.org, CryptoNote.org, and Tor CN website are the same. This may indicate that the genuine public key is published there.
ImplicationsThis evidence indicates that both whitepapers on CN official website are likely to be fake. It might explain why we find so many inconsistencies with the dates. Apparently, the whitepaper v.1 have been copied line by line with a few mistakes accidentally missed. What's more, someone inserted extra unused links to the references list. The wrong XMP dates may indicate the time when both whitepapers were forged and are likely the artifact that the authors failed to pay attention to (or intentionally left wrong).
TL;DR
It is likely that both CN whitepapers on CryptoNote website are forged. It is likely that the genuine v.2 is on bytecoin.org, while the genuine v.1 is on Tor CryptoNote website (ol346fucnsjru223.onion). It is possible that the whitepapers have been copied line by line with a couple of extra mistakes as in the v.1 case. The references that are inconsistent with the v.1 content are not used in the text and might have been inserted to confuse the potential researchers.
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