{"id":386,"date":"2013-10-12T11:50:52","date_gmt":"2013-10-12T15:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jhumag.dev.173.166.187.154.xip.io\/?p=386"},"modified":"2014-06-02T15:20:35","modified_gmt":"2014-06-02T19:20:35","slug":"crystal-ball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2013\/10\/crystal-ball\/","title":{"rendered":"Crystal Ball"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-387\" src=\"http:\/\/dev.bcreativegroup.com\/jhuwse\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/shutterstock_82376824-300x174.jpg\" alt=\"shutterstock_82376824\" width=\"300\" height=\"174\" srcset=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/shutterstock_82376824-300x174.jpg 300w, https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/shutterstock_82376824-1024x594.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>Q:\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>As we move our economy out of coins and bills and onto the Internet in the form of e-money such as Bitcoin, what privacy concerns lie ahead, and how might we address them?<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\"><strong>A:\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><span class=\"s3\">Matthew Green, assistant research professor at the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute (JHUISI).<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">F<span class=\"s1\">rom debit cards to online banking, cash has become as old-fashioned as a rotary dial telephone. It\u2019s not unusual for some of us to go weeks without touching real greenbacks, as those little plastic cards pay for everything we need.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">But because these cards are not real money, they\u2019re only good for transfers from one bank or institution to another. This means that the transactions you make with them are trackable\u2014and hackable. If you\u2019ve ever gotten a letter from your credit card company saying your info has been compromised, you know what I mean.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">That\u2019s why Bitcoin is so interesting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">The only digital currency in wide use worldwide today, Bitcoin is not associated with any bank, government, or central authority. Bitcoins are like diamonds: They have value because they are scarce and because people value them. They are not backed up by gold or other currency.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">People create Bitcoins using a computer app, which \u201cmines\u201d them using lots of electricity, time, and computational power. Then they use them to buy goods and services. (Search the Internet, and you\u2019ll find hundreds of merchants who accept Bitcoins for everything from office supplies to pizza!)<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">One of Bitcoin\u2019s biggest appeals is the promise of user anonymity. People pay out and receive Bitcoins through a computer-generated \u201caddress\u201d or key not associated with their names. However, each time a Bitcoin changes virtual hands, that transaction is recorded digitally on something called a \u201cblock chain,\u201d which is a public ledger of all Bitcoin transactions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">I believe, in fact, that the block chain is Bitcoin\u2019s privacy Achilles\u2019 heel. Because that block chain ledger is public, it\u2019s not difficult to data mine to find patterns in use, and to figure out who users are and how much they have.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">My team and I believe we have an answer to this weakness. It\u2019s called \u201cZerocoin.\u201d Developed\u00a0<span class=\"s2\">by my two PhD students, Ian Miers and Christina Garman, along with colleague Avi Rubin\u00a0<\/span>and me, Zerocoin adds anonymity<span class=\"s3\">technology into the Bitcoin network.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">In a nutshell, people swap their Bitcoins for anonymous tokens we call Zerocoins, which are spent the same way as Bitcoins are. But because the currency is in Zerocoins, it\u2019s not recorded on the block chain until the end, when the user swaps his Zerocoins for Bitcoins. Even then, our team has designed Zerocoins so that an observer cannot identify that the Zerocoin being traded in is the same one that was substituted for the Bitcoin originally.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\">Zerocoin is like the world\u2019s biggest laundry\u2014one that can handle millions of users, has no trusted party, and can\u2019t be compromised. It\u2019s been a lot of work\u2014and we are still working<br \/>\non it\u2014but we think privacy\u00a0<\/span>is important.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Q:\u00a0As we move our economy out of coins and bills and onto the Internet in the form of e-money such as Bitcoin, what privacy concerns lie ahead, and how might we address them? A:\u00a0Matthew Green, assistant research professor at the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute (JHUISI). From debit cards to online banking, cash has&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":570,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-big-ideas","issue-winter-2014"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Crystal Ball - JHU Engineering Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2013\/10\/crystal-ball\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Crystal Ball - JHU Engineering Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Q:\u00a0As we move our economy out of coins and bills and onto the Internet in the form of e-money such as Bitcoin, what privacy concerns lie ahead, and how might we address them? 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