[48614] in Cypherpunks
Re: FV Demonstrates Fatal Flaw in Software Encryption of Credit Cards
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Mazieres)
Tue Jan 30 04:49:42 1996
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 04:34:18 -0500
From: David Mazieres <dm@amsterdam.lcs.mit.edu>
To: Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb@nsb.fv.com>, cypherpunks@toad.com
In-Reply-To: Nathaniel Borenstein's message of Mon, 29 Jan 1996 15:07:46 -0500
(EST)
This sounds like nothing but a glorified keystroke sniffer like xkey.
More importantly, however, if my system did get compromised, I would
have bigger worries than my credit card number. I give my credit card
number out to people every day, but no one knows my PGP or ssh
passphrases, for example.
You may argue that many people don't have source code to their OS's,
so that viruses can spread more easily to them than to me. Well, many
people don't do backups, either. Ask most people if they would rather
divulge their credit card numbers or loose the entire contents of
their hard drives, and I think the answer will most likely be the
credit card number disclosure.
This article looks like a cheap attention getting device for FV to get
some free publicity. I am not impressed.
David
