Having Fun With Crypto: The Blinding Attack And The Crazy World of Wet Signatures

The world still seems to trust wet signatures over cryptography signatures. Just the other day, I submitted a document for funding, and I took a GIF of my signature, and pasted it into a Word document, and then created a PDF, and the recipient was happy that I had signed it. Unfortunately, these days, anyone I can get my signature, and scan it in, and cover it to a GIF, and then pretend to be me. I really don’t understand why we still blindly accept wet signatures on paper, and, especially, on electronic documents. We are taking an old way of doing something, and now trusting it in the digital work. It’s crazy!

So let’s have a bit of fun with crypto, and see if we can trick Bob into signing for a blank check, and for Eve to cash in. And so Eve rushes into Bob’s Office, and tells him that he has won a prize for $100, and all he has to do is to sign a statement that he is the winner:

Unfortunately Eve gets Bob to sign for IOU for $1 million, and immediate starts court proceedings to recover the money. “You signed a document which you said you would give me $1million”, says Eve in court. “Is that your signature?”, she…