[39573] in Cypherpunks
Re: NYT on Netscape Crack
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Perry E. Metzger)
Wed Sep 20 08:14:37 1995
To: aba@atlas.ex.ac.uk
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com, jsw@neon.netscape.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 19 Sep 1995 17:54:32 BST."
<155.9509191654@exe.dcs.exeter.ac.uk>
Reply-To: perry@piermont.com
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 1995 08:11:17 -0400
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
aba@atlas.ex.ac.uk writes:
> Andrew Loewenstern <andrew_loewenstern@il.us.swissbank.com> writes:
> > Oh, can we now expect to see source to at least the security portions of
> > Navigator and the Commerce server?
> An excellent proposal.
Not especially usefull. The bulk of the security problems won't
obviously have anything to do with the "security" portion of the code.
> Save Ian and David the effort of reverse engineering it again (which
> it is obviously pointless, and more: mathematically impossible, to do),
What do you mean, mathematically impossible? Thats silly.
> Or if that doesn't sit well with copyright interests, how about
> writing up an open spec about how the random number generator works?
> Then we can critique it.
That makes good sense, but I doubt they are that sensible. I also
worry that they would try to do something like patenting obvious and
long used techniques to "protect" themselves.
Perry
