Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request
From: msb@sq.com (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: ATM Handling of PINS
Message-ID: <12813@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 27 Sep 90 10:08:07 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 696, Message 13 of 14


> ... the bank stores the encrypted PIN and does a straight match.  The
> technique was invented by John Atalla, one of the early Fairchild
> people.  Most of the bank PIN pads I have seen have been made by
> Atalla Technovations.  The chip performs a one-way (e.g. many-to-one)
> encryption of an arbitrary number of key presses. ...

As noted by someone else, the same techique of storing only the
encrypted form is used by UNIX for its password file.  To clarify the
above, Atalla's invention was the chip used in ATMs, not the concept
of storing the encrypted form.

The credit for *that* turns out to go to one of the founders of
computing -- it first appears in a book from 1966 or so, by Maurice
Wilkes.  Wilkes was the leader of the team that produced the early
computer -- the first computer, by some people's definition -- called
the EDSAC.

Thanks to Dennis Ritchie and Marc Kaufman for helping me locate the
above information.


Mark Brader, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com