[10174] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: password-cracking by journalists...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ricardo Anguiano)
Thu Jan 17 15:22:22 2002
To: cryptography@wasabisystems.com
From: Ricardo Anguiano <reanguiano@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: Ricardo Anguiano <reanguiano@yahoo.com>
Date: 17 Jan 2002 11:59:59 -0800
In-Reply-To: <20020116141521.138597B4B@berkshire.research.att.com>
Message-ID: <pu48lpds.fsf@yahoo.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Would such documents be protected by the DMCA? Let us say that instead
these files were found on Enron computers up at auction. Does it make a
difference? Could the reporters be prosecuted and convicted in either
case?
Steve Bellovin <smb@research.att.com> writes:
> A couple of months ago, a Wall Street Journal reporter bought two
> abandoned al Qaeda computers from a looter in Kabul. Some of the
> files on those machines were encrypted. But they're dealing with
> that problem:
>
> The unsigned report, protected by a complex password, was
> created on Aug. 19, according to the Kabul computer's
> internal record. The Wall Street Journal commissioned an
> array of high-speed computers programmed to crack passwords.
> They took five days to access the file.
>
> Does anyone have any technical details on this? (I assume that it's
> a standard password-guessing approach, but it it would be nice to know
> for certain. If nothing else, are Arabic passwords easier or harder
> to guess than, say, English ones?)
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