[bisq-network/proposals] Certification for ownership of a bank account (#23)

Manfred Karrer notifications at github.com
Sun Jun 3 09:00:45 UTC 2018


@sqrrm @alexej996 
After thinking further I think there is a solution to limit the privacy exposure to non-critical data:

The verification of the withdrawal transaction statement would not reveal identifying data, it would only show that there has been a withdrawal with the requested amount and an expected reference text (in an expected data range - but I left that unspecified so far as I was not sure if it is required). 
If we can limit it to that part the arbitrator would not get exposed privacy critical data.

Though then there is the problem that a scammer could make the withdrawal with his own bank account  and present that to certify a stolen bank account. The verification of the bank ID was preventing that case. Maybe we find another model which avoids revealing the bank ID but still provides the security that the withdrew amount was from the account to get certified and not from any other account? 

I think the solution is to leave the bank ID verification to the trading peer and use the withdrawal amount as a derivative of the bank ID data. It can be used as a trapdoor function similar like hashes. You can derive the same amount easily if you know the bank ID but you cannot derive the bank ID from the amount. Of course the security of that trapdoor function is pretty low but for our use case it should be sufficient.

So lets assume the arbitrator will sign only the amount and will put the hash of the bank ID + amount + signature into the data structure which gets published. He cannot proof if the hash was really created from the account which hash he certified but a trader will do that later and would reject the trading peer if that data was fake.
In the trade process the users are exchanging their bank details, derive the hash and amount from that data, will check if the certificate matches both hash and amount and if the signature is valid. If that all is valid the certified account was correct, if the hash or amount would be different then the peer has tricked the arbitrator by using a different account and the certificate will get marked as invalid. 

The privacy exposure is then limited to what the banking webpage displays in the transaction history screen. I just checked 3 of my bank accounts and all show the bank account nr. and 2 also the name. So requiring a PageSigned document does not allow the use to filter out such identifying data. Reducing the requirement to a screenshot would make it easy to blur away such data but also easy to fake the screenshot. A video screensharing could deliver a feasible solution as it is much harder to fake such and still easy to cover the areas which should not be exposed to the arbitrator. PageSigner works on average only at 60-70% anyway so an alternative not 100% secure verification model was required anyway.

There is still a problem though:
The scammer could calculate the required amount for his stolen account and then make a withdrawal of that amount from his own account and present that to the arbitrator. Then the data would be be no detected as invalid in the trade process. To mitigate that we could extend the data set with the bank name and the arbitrator would cross check if the bank name is matching the withdrawal statement.
Then the scammer would need to have his own bank account at the same bank as the stolen account which at least reduce a lot the possible scam cases. 
That should be good enough. The goal is not a 100% safe method (though would be good to have) but to make Bisq for scammers not attractive to keep them out.

What do you think? Do you see any issues with the modified model? 

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