One corollary of Internet scale security is topoint out a lurking issue with microtransactions (one of the perennialInternet enthusiasms in some quarters). The problem is how you handleauthorizing microtransactions.

If you prompt the user every time they spend a cent, I think it's verylike that people will rapidly find this far too annoying and stop usingmicrotransactions at all. If you do not require the user to authorizetransactions you open yourself (and the user) up to attacks wherethe user's browser or other

Ten years ago or so, mass login and password guessing attacks wereessentially a non-issue; old news, an attack whose time had passed notonly because everyone knew how to counter them but because they had sucha low payoff that no one bothered doing the tedious work (and if someonedid, you pitied them).

Then the Internet happened and everything changed. Suddenly masspassword guessing attacks were not a theoretical issue; instead, theywere cluttering up your logs every day .This happened not because mass password