The Key Ring

[Mike Hearn]

(this was originally posted on the Foundation forum a week or so ago, I repost it here for additional feedback and discussion)

Consider an electronic ring that you wear on your finger. This ring can act as an authenticator to devices that have cryptographic locks which makes it a natural complement for smart property, but it can also be used for Bitcoin transactions as well.

Shops contain objects you want to buy, with theft prevented by using various kinds of alarm-triggering radio tags. With a key ring, the act of reaching out and taking an object from the shelf is enough to make your ring come into nearby contact with an NFC tag in the object itself - a brief flash is enough to tell you that the ring sent the product ID to your phone, which then communicated with the shop via its in-house wifi and successfully set up a payment. The payment wasn't broadcast yet, but at the door are powerful directional radios that can access the products NFC tags from a greater distance than what is normally possible. When they see the product leave the shop, your Bitcoin transaction is broadcast by the shop and the payment is locked in. If they see a product leave that has no corresponding payment, the alarm sounds.

Business deals have been sealed with a handshake for centuries. When two people wearing key rings handshake, their rings attest their identities to each other via NFC, and the rings then communicate that back to the users smartphones using Bluetooth. The wearers phone searches its inboxes and message histories looking for communication with the other person, and if it finds a price denominated in Bitcoins in a prior conversation that's used as the amount of money to transfer. Just agree in writing, and then when you meet a handshake seals the deal. As a bonus, it transparently exchanges keys that are also usable for encrypted communications.

Key Rings would give new meaning to wedding rituals. An exchange of rings would not only symbolise true love, but the act of putting on a wedding ring could also represent financial unity: my ring lets me spend your money, and your ring lets you spend mine. Receiving your first ring could be a coming-of-age rite.

The rings can be used to transparently release locks - by taking hold of a steering wheel, door handle or phone, the ring authenticates the wearer and the device starts up/opens/wakes up and logs you in. Rings could take the place of Oyster cards on the London Underground to conveniently pay for trips on public transport.

Finally, a key ring makes multi-party transactions physically natural. If three people have money in a set of 3-of-3 outputs, they can each put their hands on top of each other - the act of all rings being in proximity triggers the multi-signing process.

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[der_troll]

I like the concept, but it's a bit scary too. I think it is important that is is open source and is developed by someone who cares a lot about privacy. So please make this before some fascist/socialist does!

PS: And it needs a way to turn it off, so you can choose when you want to leave no trace!

[Mike Hearn]

Maybe the way to turn it off is just take it off?

[marcus_of_augustus]

I like it, awesome concept. Seems like a good fit for tons human recognisable applications. Old made new again. 

Take it off it de-activates, maybe even a future mechanism for the ring to authenticate the wearer ... dna on a chip, etc.

[threeip]

Love it. Not too sure about DNA authentication, but it would need a 'button' to prevent unauth wireless reading.

Here's an Oyster ring someone made;

http://www.ds72.com/latest-work/oyster-ring

[Jan]

Which reminded me of this from back in 1998: http://www.nngroup.com/articles/javaring-wearable-computer/

[threeip]

On his own wikipedia page like a BOSS.

Here's one on eBay;
http://www.ebay.com/itm/JAVA-RING-RARE-Sun-Microsystems-JAVA-ONE-Promo-/300495374337

[Hal]

Which reminded me of this from back in 1998: http://www.nngroup.com/articles/javaring-wearable-computer/

I used to have one of these. In fact, I hacked a version of PGP to look for your private key on the ring, so you could sign or decrypt just by touching the ring to the reader. (Actually you had to kind of snap it in.) Since PGP already used the "key ring" terminology, I thought it was particularly apropos. Too bad they never caught on, although it would bring on the dreaded "stolen finger" attack.

[jdbtracker]

Which reminded me of this from back in 1998: http://www.nngroup.com/articles/javaring-wearable-computer/

I used to have one of these. In fact, I hacked a version of PGP to look for your private key on the ring, so you could sign or decrypt just by touching the ring to the reader. (Actually you had to kind of snap it in.) Since PGP already used the "key ring" terminology, I thought it was particularly apropos. Too bad they never caught on, although it would bring on the dreaded "stolen finger" attack.

lol thats hilarious, so how is the dreaded Stolen finger attack implemented? What if their lazy and they just want to minimize lag and take all the fingers?

[kiko]

Finally, a key ring makes multi-party transactions physically natural. If three people have money in a set of 3-of-3 outputs, they can each put their hands on top of each other - the act of all rings being in proximity triggers the multi-signing process.

*pictures the 3 musketeers, crypto-saving the world.

Where's that guy with the comic book skills when you need him?

[bg002h]

I just ordered one of the java rings. I like the nostalgia. I've gotta get my hands on a reader now! I'd love to hack it to type my password...I should be presenting a hardware & software hack / kludge I made to turn an iPhone in to a dictaphone and pointing device for radiologists at the RSNA.org 2013 meeting (abstract submitted). How cool would it be to incorporate the ring in authentication?

Anyhow, Mike's ideas clearly have legs. Physical implementation of encrypted communication seems so natural and so obvious, how could it not happen? Why shouldn't it start (anew) with us?

I'm slightly handy with a soldering gun, arduino, teensy, java, c, obj c, etc (but crypto unskilled, despite my training in math)...And I've got more money now than a radiology resident ever has.  I'm game.

[cypherdoc]

Shops contain objects you want to buy, with theft prevented by using various kinds of alarm-triggering radio tags. With a key ring, the act of reaching out and taking an object from the shelf is enough to make your ring come into nearby contact with an NFC tag in the object itself - a brief flash is enough to tell you that the ring sent the product ID to your phone, which then communicated with the shop via its in-house wifi and successfully set up a payment. The payment wasn't broadcast yet, but at the door are powerful directional radios that can access the products NFC tags from a greater distance than what is normally possible. When they see the product leave the shop, your Bitcoin transaction is broadcast by the shop and the payment is locked in. If they see a product leave that has no corresponding payment, the alarm sounds.

interesting idea.

the item should only activate the NFC if it moves further than say 6 ft of the shelf.  ppl always pick things off the shelf to look at more closely but never buy.

[CIYAM]

Am worried about the appearance of the "one ring" and where we are going to find the little folk to take it to an active volcano to rid the world of its all encompassing evil power.


 

[DeveloperFish]

Java Ring:

I worked @Sun for ~15 years. I was part of a team that built some of the very first apps for demo'ing the capabilities of the Java Ring, including an interesting demo where we created our own (toy) crypto java currency (to make it easier to demo, we built in the ability to "mint" new "coins" for anyone who had a ring and wanted to try the demo - not very secure, and hyper inflationary), stored it on the ring, and used it to buy cans of coke from a coke machine (embedded the reader into the payment receptacle on the vending machine). The software was easy, the hard part was going from digital to analog and back by integrating the reader into the vending machine (this was pre-digital vending machines - we had to rewire the whole machine, learned a ton about how multi-step electro-magnetic solenoids work). For the digital piece we used an embedded PC running Linux (and Java), with wireless Ethernet.

I think I still have several rings lying around somewhere - the readers were cheap, but the rings were pretty well made.

- DeveloperFish

[Mike Hearn]

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ipcyp/now_this_is_cool_nfc_ring/

Someone is actually making an NFC ring. It's not usable for the scenarios I described because the chip is just a dumb data holder and can't do any computation, but regardless, I love the idea of being able to unlock my phone using a ring. If they are able to raise the money and engage in mass manufacturing, it's possible they could quickly upgrade to more powerful NFC chips.

[Bitware]

http://www.murata.com/new/news_release/2012/0920/

15mm read range.

probably small enough to make a metal slide/flip enclosure for a faraday cage embedded in/on a ring.

[threeip]

I love the idea of being able to unlock my phone using a ring.

I would be happy to use an implanted re-programmable chip for this, but give me a NFC ring with a few MB storage and a blazing fast interface please!

[Dharmadog]

Java Ring:

I worked @Sun for ~15 years. I was part of a team that built some of the very first apps for demo'ing the capabilities of the Java Ring, including an interesting demo where we created our own (toy) crypto java currency (to make it easier to demo, we built in the ability to "mint" new "coins" for anyone who had a ring and wanted to try the demo - not very secure, and hyper inflationary), stored it on the ring, and used it to buy cans of coke from a coke machine (embedded the reader into the payment receptacle on the vending machine). The software was easy, the hard part was going from digital to analog and back by integrating the reader into the vending machine (this was pre-digital vending machines - we had to rewire the whole machine, learned a ton about how multi-step electro-magnetic solenoids work). For the digital piece we used an embedded PC running Linux (and Java), with wireless Ethernet.

I think I still have several rings lying around somewhere - the readers were cheap, but the rings were pretty well made.

- DeveloperFish

Cool.