[2219] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: HP announcement
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Declan McCullagh)
Fri Feb 27 20:28:55 1998
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 14:17:08 -0800 (PST)
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To: cryptography@c2.net
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 14:12:58 -0800 (PST)
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To: politech@vorlon.mit.edu
Subject: HP announces VerSecure hardware with key recovery
[Note I only wrote the first item. The rest are by the inimitable Jonathan
Gregg. This is on the web at:
http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/afternoon/0,1012,1771,00.html --Declan]
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 16:02:46 -0500
From: Jonathan Gregg <jgregg@PATHFINDER.COM>
To: AFTERNOONLINE@LISTSERV.PATHFINDER.COM
Subject: Afternoon Line February 27, 1998
One-Year Itch
Even if you studiously ignore the arcana of encryption export rules, it's
worth paying attention to a new product from Hewlett Packard.
The government has OK'ed the overseas sale of HP's "VerSecure" boards and
computer chips that have full-strength encryption built in -- but turned
off by default. To engage the data-scrambling features, you'll need an
"activation token."
Catch is, however, that they last only one year, and the tokens also can
open a "key recovery" electronic peephole for snooping government agents.
This is the only way HP can hawk these things in France, a country with no
shortage of such police.
Now, the FBI wants to ban U.S. software without such peepholes. Doesn't
crypto-crippleware make it much easier for the government to issue only
key recovery tokens when everyone's existing ones expire?
"Whatever the law is in the U.S., we will comply," says CEO Lewis Platt.
--By Declan McCullagh/Washington
Pentagon Peepers
"The most organized and systematic attack" ever staged against the
Pentagon's computers appears to have been the work of two California
teenagers, according to the FBI.
Agents reportedly walked in on one of them as he was in the process of
hacking a nonclassified Pentagon computer.
But there are some doubts as to whether the two could have sustained the
kind of methodical attack that military computers have endured over the
past two weeks, in which 11 different military bases have been targeted.
The government's hard line on encryption controls is also likely to come
under scrutiny as people start to wonder whether creating more keys to
sensitive materials is really the path to greater security.
http://spyglass1.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/013197.htm
http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/10594.html
http://www.phillynews.com/inquirer/98/Feb/27/business/HACK27.htm
http://www5.zdnet.com/zdnn/content/zdnn/0226/288835.html
Naked Truth
The American Civil Liberties Union -- and six college professors --
prevailed yesterday in a Virgina courtroom, where a federal judge struck
down a state law prohibiting state employees from using their work
computers to view "sexually explicit" materials.
This statute presented a major problem to George Mason University's Paul
Smith, for example, whose course in censorship in a popular culture was
something of a nonstarter online without the five nude pictures he was
forced to remove to comply with the law.
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,19529,00.html
Damn It, Janet
Janet Reno wasn't telling us anything new when she admitted yesterday that
intractable differences between the FBI and telephone companies had brought
the implementation of a 1994
law to a standstill.
At issue is the degree of access the FBI is seeking in the new wiretapping
technology that the telephone companies are supposed to have installed by
next October.
As stipulated in the 1994 law, the government would pay the telephone
companies $500 million to install the wiretapping technology, but two years
of wrangling -- during which the FBI has been accused of grossly
overstepping its mandate -- has not fostered great warmth between the feds
and the companies.
The latter now are demanding that the government promise to reimburse them
for any expenses above the original $500,000 budget, which is likely to be
insufficient to get the job done.
But the House subcommittee before which Reno testified was unmoved by her
appeal for more money, saying that it was out of the question until the
warring parties resolve their differences -- and clearly suggesting that
she should have done something about it much sooner.
http://spyglass1.sjmercury.com/breaking/docs/012023.htm
Blue Horizon
I'd like to take this opportunity to say good-bye to my dear colleague
Noah Robischon, whose friendship has been a highlight of my Pathfinder
experience.
One of the cofounders of Netly News, with Josh Quittner, Noah will be
plying his many talents at a new magazine called Content, and all of us
here will miss him very much.
Godspeed, good buddy.
