Fun_People Archive
12 Oct
Excerpts from Netsurfer Digest: Vol. 00, #24 (TEXT)

Date: Wed, 12 Oct 94 17:02:12 PDT
To: Fun_People
Subject: Excerpts from Netsurfer Digest: Vol. 00, #24 (TEXT)

BREAKING SURF
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Latest news from the online frontier


    RSA SECRET ENCRYPTION ALGORITHM POSTED TO THE NET

    The source code to the trade secret RC4 algorithm used by RSA Data
    Security in their encryption products showed up on USENET recently.
    Inevitable really, if you think about it. The folks at RSA, who hold
    key patents in public key encryption, are in a snit while hackers
    rejoice and the FBI nearly wets itself with excitement over the
    possibility of increased anti-hacker funding. Follow it all on
    sci.crypt in the thread "RC4 Algorithm revealed" and others with the
    words RC4 or RSADSI in them. The bulk of the discussion seems to be
    about whether the code was legally reconstructed or stolen, and what
    will happen to you if you use it. Several posters have already
    implemented improvements to the posted code to make it run faster and
    more efficiently.


    PKZIP ENCRYPTION BROKEN USING KNOWN PLAINTEXT

    As long as we're talking encryption, it seems that the encryption
    feature of PKZIP, the popular compression program, apparently can be
    broken using information about the contents of a file (not that hard
    to come by, actually). A good discussion of the issues and limitations
    of this method can be found on sci.crypt under the thread "PKZIP
    encryption 'contest' password recovered."


    CONGRESS PASSES PHONE BUGGING BILL

    On Friday the Senate, by "unanimous consent" and despite vigorous
    lobbying and expressions of loathing from private individuals aware of
    the legislation, passed a bill (S 2375) mandating that every phone
    exchange in the U.S. must contain a back door allowing law enforcment
    to bug traffic passing through that equipment. The house has passed a
    similar bill (HR 4922) just days earlier. President Clinton is
    expected to sign the law which places the power to regulate the
    implementation of this legislation in the hands of the FCC. A sad day
    for the privacy of U.S. citizens. Tune into alt.privacy or check out
    the following:
    http://http.eff.org/pub/EFF/Policy/Digital_Telephony/digtel94.bill
    ftp://ftp.eff.org/pub/EFF/Policy/Digital_Telephony/digtel94.bill


    WORLD WIDE WEB PAGES NOW OBTAINABLE BY E-MAIL

    Those prolific folks at CERN have created yet another great World-Wide
    -Web service. Simply send an E-Mail message to "listproc@wwwo.cern.ch"
    and include the URL of the Web page you want in the body of the
    message. In the blink of a cybereye (or maybe in a matter of days, you
    never know anymore) the requested page will show up in your mailbox.
    This means anyone with just an E-Mail connection - like people on
    Prodigy, AOL, or CompuServe - can now read Web pages. The audience for
    WWW materials has just jumped by a few million.





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© 1994 Peter Langston