[8563] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: IEEE 802.11 WEP holes
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (R. A. Hettinga)
Tue Feb 6 14:55:19 2001
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In-Reply-To: <200102051735.JAA16481@nova.botz.org>
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 18:03:29 -0500
To: Jurgen Botz <jurgen@botz.org>, cryptography@c2.net, mac-crypto@vmeng.com,
dcsb@ai.mit.edu, Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs@philodox.com>
From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah@shipwright.com>
Cc: Vinnie Moscaritolo <vinnie@vmeng.com>,
Nikita Borisov <nikitab@CS.Berkeley.EDU>, Paul Harrison <pth@ibuc.com>
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At 9:35 AM -0800 2/5/01, Jurgen Botz wrote:
> Slashdot this morning reported on a ZD-Net article at:
>
>http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2681947,00.html?chkpt=zdhpnews0
> 1
> which states that there are major holes in IEEE 802.11 "WEP" encryption.
>
> Does anyone have any more details on this?
http://www.vmeng.com/mc/debrief00.html, and grep for WEP, although Vinnie
hasn't gotten the slides from Nikita Borosov yet, it looks like, but I bet
they'll be there soon, now :-)...
Nikita's talk at mac-crypto last week was entirely coincident to the
slashdotted ZDNet story, I'm sure, :-), though I wouldn't be completely
surprised that ZeroKnowlege's PR folks stirred the pot there as well. I
can't wait to see if Schneier calls this a "publicity attack". (Nawwwww,
Jon Callas was there, and he'd have said something, I'm sure, so I'd say
ZKS has been offically inoculated from such a scandalous accusation...)
The above remarkable cooincidence, coupled with the "impromptu lecture"
from conference floor by Apple's entirely defeatist :-) export-lawyer,
which appeared the Guardian story this morning, means, I suppose,
mac-crypto's now officially influential, if not exactly famous...
Of course, Vinnie, and I sicced Paul on poor Ian to bring himself, or or
send someone like Nikita, after Paul saw Ian's recent Bay-Area cypherpunks
meeting talk on the same subject, and said we *had* to have a talk on their
total WEP-crack this year. Moral: use end-to-end encryption, IPSec (PGPNet,
other stuff), for instance.
Anyway, a good time was had by all, and Nikita, -- followed by the talk
that Andrew did with MojoNation running in System X after some
immediately-burned midnight oil -- completely stole the show this year.
A great time was had by all, wish you were there, see you next time, and
all that... :-).
Cheers,
RAH
--
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
