[107827] in Cypherpunks
CIVIL LIBERTARIANS WARY OF PENTIUM IIIs SECURITY FEATURE
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (FitugMix)
Sun Jan 24 22:16:16 1999
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1999 04:04:45 +0100 (MET)
From: FitugMix <tonne@thur.de>
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Reply-To: FitugMix <tonne@thur.de>
CIVIL LIBERTARIANS WARY OF PENTIUM III's SECURITY FEATURE
A new feature of Intel's forthcoming Pentium III chip intended to facilitate
electronic commerce has civil libertarians worried because it will allow a
person's moves to be tracked throughout cyberspace, unless s/he turns the
feature off. Every Pentium III chip will have a unique serial number that
will, unless turned off, be automatically transmitted whenever the computer
is connected to a network. Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties
Union says, "It's the computer equivalent, if you will, of Social Security
numbers, which in this country is a common identifier. It will follow you
through cyberspace." But Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff says there
are times when you simply can't be anonymous, on the Internet or anywhere
else: "You can't buy anything anonymously... You can't get the most
personalized sites anonymously." (Washington Post 22 Jan 99)
"Mary had a crypto key,
she kept it in escrow,
and everything that Mary said,
the Feds were sure to know." -- Sam Simpson
#!/usr/local/bin/perl -0777-- -export-a-crypto-system-sig -RC4-3-lines-PERL
@k=unpack('C*',pack('H*',shift));for(@t=@s=0..255){$y=($k[$_%@k]+$s[$x=$_
]+$y)%256;&S}$x=$y=0;for(unpack('C*',<>)){$x++;$y=($s[$x%=256]+$y)%256;
&S;print pack(C,$_^=$s[($s[$x]+$s[$y])%256])}sub S{@s[$x,$y]=@s[$y,$x]}
