By: Geeq  on Apr 6, 2025

The Goal: Prove Access was Given to the Right Person

Imagine a teacher giving out four special job stickers to four students in a classroom. The goal is to make sure only the right student selected for the job is able to do it.

There are 5 kids in the classroom:
👧🏽Alex, 👩🏿‍🦱Bella, 🧑🏻Charlie,👱🏻 Dana, and 🙋Evan

There are 4 jobs: 🎨Artist, 🛠️Builder, 🧮Counter, 📊Data analyst.

The teacher says:

• “Alex is my Artist.”
• “Bella is my Builder.”
• “Charlie is my Counter.”
• “Dana is my Data Analyst.”
• “Evan, you’re not working today, you can relax.”

Then she hands out the right job sticker to each child.

How It Started: Check If the Physical Message (Sticker) Is a Valid Message (From the Teacher)

Before anyone starts their job, they go to the Job Station.
The station says: “Show me your sticker!”
Only kids with the teacher’s real sticker are allowed to do the job.
If someone shows up with no sticker, or the wrong one, they’re sent back to their desk.

Evan tries:
Evan: “Can I be the Artist?”
Job Station: “Let me see your sticker.”
Evan: “Uh… I don’t have one.”
Job Station: “Sorry! Only people with real stickers from the teacher can work today!”

📚 Why This Works (in a High Trust environment)
The teacher gives out one job, one sticker, one kid.
Evan asked nicely and was sent back to his desk.
👴🏻That’s old-fashioned authentication – proving who you are with something only you were given.

At first, the system works. The kids get their stickers and bring them to the Job Stations, the Job Stations take the right sticker for each job, and the right kids do the right jobs.

But then, a problem happens.

Threat Analysis : What If It’s A Low Trust Environment?

When the Job Stations only check the stickers, a Job Station could be fooled by a very good copy of the sticker or the sticker could have been stolen! 😯

If Evan steals another student’s sticker, the Job Station will check it. It’s a real sticker. The Job Station lets Evan do the other student’s job.

If Evan makes his own fake sticker, the Job Station may be confused. It sees two stickers … but one is fake. How does it tell who really got the sticker from the teacher?

If anyone can make a sticker, then nobody knows who really got the job. The system breaks. The real Artist might get pushed out by the fake one. The wrong kid might do the wrong job. These are problems with the unauthorized use of a valid message.

💡It’s not enough to see a sticker. We need a way to check the teacher made it, not a kid.

The First Use of Digital Signatures : Encryption

The teacher realizes that simple stickers aren’t enough—anyone can copy or steal them.

She switches to sending digital job messages instead of physical stickers.

She wants to use a special note that only she can write, so no one can fake a job sticker. However, instead of using a physical identifier that everyone can see, she keeps part of her process secret.

🪄She creates a special mark – a secret note that only she knows how to write. This note is made using her private key, which she never shares with anyone.

She tells the Job Station how to detect she has used her private key. To do this, she tells it her public key, which is the only way to check that she wrote the secret note.

Now the Job Station can use its knowledge of the public key to check the note and confirm the sticker really came from the teacher.

When a sticker shows up, the Job Station is able to read more than before. Instead of only being able to see the sticker 🎨“Artist” or 🎨“Builder”, it uses the public key to verify the sender.

🔍 Let’s Try Again:
Now, when a student sends in a message, the Job Station checks:
👉 “Did this come with a note the teacher’s private key would create?”

If yes: ✅ Real sticker.
If no: ❌ Fake sticker.

One Digital Signature Helps.
Evan copies a sticker but doesn’t have the teacher’s secret note.
He sends it in.

Job Station: “Wait a minute! That’s not the teacher’s note.”
Evan: “But it looks like the right sticker!”
Job Station: “Looks aren’t enough. It has to be signed by the teacher.”

🎓 What the Digital Signature (Public-Private Key Pair) Has Solved So Far:

• Only the teacher can send real job stickers.
• The Job Station can check each one without asking the teacher which ones are real.
• If someone tries to counterfeit a sticker, the Job Station will catch it.
  
  Now we have a sticker + a digital signature, are we done? No!

😬 A Signed Sticker Isn’t Enough If Someone Can Copy It

The teacher is sending real job stickers with her secret note (her private key).
The Job Station knows how to check the note (using the public key).
That part works fine.

But here’s the problem:

Once the teacher sends the digitally signed sticker to Alex—by sending it over the internet—as a QR code, a file, or a message on a website, Evan can see it too, even if he wasn’t supposed to.

Threat Analysis: The Replay Attack

The digital signature confirms who signed the message. However, if the message arrives in a visual or digital format, anyone watching can grab it.

A replay attack happens when someone copies a real message and sends it or uses it without permission.

Imagine this: Alex gets a real job sticker from the teacher. Evan sees it, copies it, and sends it in himself.

The system checks:
✅ Is the sticker real? Yes.
✅ Is the signature real? Yes.

So it accepts Evan’s message—even though it was meant for Alex.

That’s a security breach.

Evan didn’t hack anything.
He didn’t break the signature.
He just replayed a real message.

🧨 What was the problem?
The system can’t tell the difference between the first sender and the copycat. Only one person should get the job. But two can send the same digitally signed sticker. In e-commerce, this kind of failure leads to promo abuse, where valid offers are reused by the wrong people.

💡 Replay attacks are sneaky because everything looks valid.
The only thing wrong is who sent it and when.

If Evan knows the system will believe whoever sends it first, he can say, “I’ll send it to the Job Station before Alex does.”

🏃 And he does. He’s faster.

• Evan uses a real sticker, with a real teacher’s digital signature.
• The Job Station checks for both.
• It’s valid!
• Evan gets the job… even though it was meant for Alex.

🤕Why This Is a Problem:

• The sticker wasn’t stolen physically—it was copied.
• The Job Station has no idea who really got it first.
• Anyone can send the message once it’s out in the open.

❓What’s Missing?
The sticker is real.
The teacher’s note is real.
But the message was not protected from being copied or sent again by the wrong person.

The signature was valid, but a valid signature alone can’t prevent replay attacks. The system lacks the digital security needed to enforce proper control.

Threat Analysis: Fraud-as-a-Service and AI Bots

Today, entire toolkits for stealing, replaying, and spoofing credentials are sold as services.
AI bots can scale these attacks—automating phishing, intercepting messages, and exploiting weak points in seconds.

The Problem Goes Beyond the Signature
Even if the sticker is real, so you know what exactly was sent,
and the teacher signed it, so you know who sent it,
you still need to know:
👉 Who responded
👉 And the sticker hasn’t been stolen or reused.

The Core Issue: If only one party’s action is authenticated, the whole exchange can be manipulated.

⚠️Do Blockchains Using Smart Contract NFTs Solve This? No!

💣Even in Web3, when stickers or tickets are minted as “secure” smart contract NFTs, they are only trying to solve the first part of the problem: issuing an asset. One problem is the asset is signed by the contract, not by a specific authority who can be held accountable.

Smart contracts also contain code that few people audit, yet everyone must trust. Even with a known and verified issuer, it’s difficult to prove who controls the NFT at any moment or how or why they have it.

🌟Geeq NFTs fix this in three ways: (1) no smart contracts, (2) no trust, and (3) every transaction is securely validated so the chain-of-custody is verifiable from end-to-end.

The Temporary Fix We Live With Now: 2-Factor Authentication (2FA)

The teacher says:
“Let’s be extra safe.
Every time someone uses their sticker,
they also have to say a secret code I send to their desk.”

Alex gets her 🎨 Artist sticker and a secret code: 5279
The Job Station says:
👉 “Show me your sticker AND tell me your secret code.”

Only the real Alex, sitting at her desk, should be able to do this.
That’s two-factor authentication:

1. Something you have (the sticker)
2. Something you know or receive (the code)

😈 The Problem: Even 2FA Can Break

Let’s say Evan is sneaky.
He watches Alex’s screen.
He sees her sticker and her secret code.
Before Alex sends anything…
Evan copies both and uses them first.

The Job Station sees:

✅A real sticker
✅The correct secret code

It says: ✅ “Okay, you’re Alex. Go ahead!”

But Evan is not Alex. He just pretended to be her. This is called an identity spoof.

🧨 Why 2FA Failed
The system saw the right sticker and the right code—but it never checked who was behind them.
This is exactly how SIM swap attacks work.

🔍 Real-World Example: SIM Swap and SMS 2FA
An attacker gets access to your phone number, receives your SMS code, and logs in before you can.

✅ Real credentials
✅ Real code
❌ Wrong person

The system checks both factors—but not who’s using them. Just like Evan, the attacker gets in first. This is a man-in-the-middle attack.

🤦‍♂️2-Factor Authentication is Still Insecure.
2FA is better than nothing—but it breaks down in everyday situations.

☕Think about using public WiFi. If someone is watching your screen or intercepting traffic, they can grab both your login and your code—and act before you do.

2FA doesn’t prove who’s acting.
2FA doesn’t stop man-in-the-middle attacks.

❌ 2FA recognizes the code, not the person.
✅ That’s the gap Geeq closes.

🎯Geeq’s Zero-Trust Solution

Working backward, if we assume every possible attack, then we need a way to
1. Prove the job sticker is authentic, signed by the private key of the issuer
2. Bind the job sticker to a specific person
3. Make sure only that person can use it

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🚀Geeq’s Zero-Trust Solution: Geeq ID NFTs

This time, the teacher will not trust a sticker will end up in the right hands just because she sent it.
She says, “I’m going to make sure this job sticker can only be used by Alex.“

Unlike smart contract NFTs, this one isn’t signed by the key to a contract.
It’s signed by the teacher herself—using her own private key. She takes full responsibility.

It’s just the teacher, her signature, and a way to make an absolute rule:
Only Alex’s public key is allowed to use this sticker.

The teacher signs the mint herself and includes that rule directly in the NFT’s data.
There’s no smart contract to interpret. No code to trust. No consensus to resolve.

Geeq works differently.
The instruction is written plainly on-chain, and it’s final.
The system doesn’t need to guess what the ID means—it says exactly what to do, and who it’s for.

It’s not a sticker. It’s a secure, verifiable assignment, bound to Alex’s public key.

The system checks:
✅ Is the assignment real? Yes.
✅ Is the teacher’s signature real? Yes.

Why Geeq IDs Work. Only the Right Person Can Answer the Challenge.

Now the Job Station doesn’t only check if the assignment is real.
It checks whether the person using it can prove they are Alex.

The Job Station creates a secret phrase—something unpredictable, like “my dog has no nose”. It encrypts this phrase using Alex’s public key, then sends the encrypted message to whoever submitted the assignment.

Only Alex, with her private key, can decrypt the phrase. When she reads it and sends the original message back—“my dog has no nose”—the Job Station knows it’s her.

Evan can still see the assignment.
He can even see the encrypted challenge.
But without Alex’s private key, he cannot respond correctly.

The Job Station replies:
❌ “You’re not the person listed in the NFT. You don’t have the right key.”

✅ The right message
✅ The right signature
✅ The right person

The system is complete. The job only goes to Alex.
Not just because she received the assignment—but because she proved she’s the only one who could use it.

🎓 What Did We Learn?

In a high-trust classroom, a sticker might be enough.
But in the real world—where messages can be copied, stolen, or spoofed—we need better tools.

Geeq IDs fix the problem by making every step provable:
🟢 Who gave permission
🟢 Who it was for
🟢 Who actually used it

2FA adds friction but still leaves gaps.
Smart contract blockchains add steps without solving the core issue.

Geeq does it differently.
It’s cleaner. Simpler. Safer.

Geeq’s Zero-Trust Solution provides precise authentication, access control, and identity management all at the same time, without error or confusion.

Geeq IDs are how you stop the wrong person from getting through your defenses while letting the right people through. Geeq’s Zero-Trust solutions are how we build foundational infrastructure strong enough to meet the demands of the future.

Interested in infrastructure built to last?
Geeq has invented fundamental solutions designed to withstand disruption.

If you’re actively investing in zero-trust security, blockchain infrastructure, digital identity, or AI-resilient cybersecurity, we’d love to connect.

📩 Email us at invest@geeq.io with a brief note about your focus.
We’ll be in touch right away to schedule a time. What we’ve built changes what’s possible.

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