[2202] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Netscape and strong crypto for the masses, from Netly News
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Declan McCullagh)
Thu Feb 26 13:56:56 1998
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 10:42:10 -0800 (PST)
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To: cryptography@c2.net
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 10:41:09 -0800 (PST)
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To: politech@vorlon.mit.edu
Subject: Netscape and strong crypto for the masses, from Netly News
-----
http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1767,00.html
The Netly News (http://netlynews.com/)
February 26, 1998
Fortification
by Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com)
Writing a complex computer program is always a dodgy undertaking.
There are the inexplicable bugs, the inevitable delays, the intricate
and all-important design decisions. Now one of the programming choices
Netscape made last year is raising eyebrows inside the U.S. government
-- and has made the supersecret National Security Agency look just a
little bit foolish.
You might remember that back in June 1997, the Mountain View firm
won permission to export browsers that communicate securely with banks
-- and only with banks! -- through encryption. But the folks at
fortify.net yesterday released a program that rewires Netscape to
allow overseas customers to chat with anyone through a scrambled
channel, much to their delight and the U.S. government's dismay. "The
worst possible result of this would be that we get our export license
taken away," says one Netscape programmer. "And nobody wants that."
[...]
