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Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2018 11:55:54 -0500
From: Jeffrey Goldberg <jeffrey@...dmark.org>
To: passwords@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: Bloom filter patent
On Oct 29, 2018, at 10:58 AM, Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com> wrote:
> A couple of weeks ago, I learned that a company claims to have patented
> the use of Bloom filter for checking whether a password is known to have
> been compromised:
Crap. I hate software patents, and particularly those for ideas I’ve
previously discussed.
> Naturally, I find patenting this unethical for many reasons.
Me, too.
>
> Now, I bring this up in here because Arnold Reinhold and I happened to
> comment on this idea in here last year:
>
> https://www.openwall.com/lists/passwords/2017/10/29/2
Unfortunately my discussion of this wasn’t in a public place. With
1Password, we want to be able to usefully prompt the user to save a new
username/password that they enter into a web from even when 1Password is
locked. So locally we need to check to see if the username/password pair
already known to 1Password.
We looked at using a Bloom Filter for this, but ended up using truncated
slow hashes. But as our discussion was internal, it can’t be used to
challenge a patent on the grounds of prior art.
> I wonder if this possibly pre-dates the patent application if one has in
> fact been made. I tried searching for patents granted to this company
> and found many, some of them looking particularly questionable, but not
> a patent on use of Bloom filters. Maybe the patent is not yet granted.
>
> Arnold, would you care and know how to possibly notify the US patent
> office about this and hopefully prevent this patent from being granted?
I’m also willing to testify that if I thought of doing this, it is “obvious”
and shouldn’t be patentable.
Cheers,
-j
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