[117407] in Cypherpunks
Goldberg Does PrivacyX
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (James Glave)
Thu Sep 2 18:08:03 1999
Message-Id: <199909022139.OAA28306@hardly.hotwired.com>
Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1999 14:39:13 -0700
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
From: James Glave <james@wired.com>
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Reply-To: James Glave <james@wired.com>
http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/21561.html
Secure Browsing? Not So Fast
by James Glave, Wired News
1:45 p.m. 2.Sep.99.PDT
As soon as a new Web service was launched this week promising completely
anonymous and private Internet use, along came a renowned crypto expert to
punch a huge hole in the claim.
And what was the immediate reaction of the director of technology for
PrivacyX, which uses a Web browser's built-in digital certificate
technology to offer completely anonymous Web browsing, email, and chat?
"Cool," said Wil Boucher.
His next reaction was to fix it.
"The hole has been repaired, and will not be a problem," Boucher said
within an hour of being alerted to the flaw.
In any event, this wasn't the way PrivacyX CEO Douglas Whorrall had hoped
to launch his service after building it up for the last year and a half.
Whorrall promised customers a new level of privacy at an optimum time: the
very week of the Hotmail security breach, the most widespread security
failure in Web history.
"We have no idea who our customers are," Whorrall said. "We can't show the
info to advertisers because we don't know it."
Then Ian Goldberg, chief scientist at Zero Knowledge Systems, quickly
cracked the PrivacyX system.
[...more]
James Glave, News Editor, Wired News http://www.wired.com +1 (415) 276-8430
