[641] in Cypherpunks
Re: VinCrypt
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (smb@research.att.com)
Wed May 26 20:47:06 1993
From: smb@research.att.com
To: Clark Reynard <clark@metal.psu.edu>
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com
Date: Wed, 26 May 93 20:35:15 EDT
Even as a former 'hacker' myself, the second to last person I would
trust not to install a backdoor (next to the NSA) is a hacker.
In addition, merely having been a systems hacker hardly qualifies
one for writing complex crypto software. Without any assurance as
to the authors' qualifications for writing a crypto package, or
their integrity. Even if I could trust their integrity, I'm very
leery of black-box software.
----
Robert W. Clark Just Say No! to the
rclark@nyx.cs.du.edu Big Brother Chip
Indeed. There were a pair of papers in Cryptologia a few years ago
on ``Data Insecurity'' packages. The author cryptanalyzed a number
of different PC-based crypto packages, and contrasted that with
the glowing advertising copy...
