From: "Josh M. Osborne" <stripes@va.pubnix.com>
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 95 14:04:00 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Liability for Key Cracking via Java scripts?
In-Reply-To: <ac5b5ee423021004e6b5@[205.199.118.202]>
Message-ID: <RAA17871.199508192103@garotte.va.pubnix.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Tim May's post got me thinking...

Assume that Java became "trusted" by most people on the Internet.
(Java is a safe subset of the Oak language, it can be intrpereted,
or compiled.  One of the proposed uses is to embed it in Web
browsers.  The compiled form is roughly as fast as C++ code.)

Assume that there is some sort of secure low transaction cost fund 
tranfer system is available.


I beleve that's all the technology you need for selling idle CPU
cycles.  Would it take off?  Raytracing (and other types of rendering)
and key cracking are the only two uses I can think of off the top
of my head (you need a relitavly low amount of communication between
processes, the ability to survive some results never coming back
(and coming back out-of-order), and preferabbly the script and data
it works on need to be smallish)


Then I thought some more...  if Java really does get embeded in web
browsers (Netscape announced that they were going to do it... it is
somewhere on their press release page), what's to prevent the Java
anamited icon widget things from doing more then just animating the
dancing stick figure?  What if it cracks keys while dancing?  I think
Java "applets" are allowed to make some form of IP connections, if
they are what's the liability for _inadvertant_ key cracking?