Category Archives: Cryptography

Last week I sent off a book review in which, among other things, I fretted about a possible second round to the Crypto Wars. (See my papers on the Clipper chip and its aftermath for info about round one.)

Although I believed what I wrote, I did worry, as I often do, that maybe I was being a little alarmist. Now this:

Symantec refuses to sell audit tool outside the US | The Register: Symantec has stopped selling a password auditing tool to customers outside the US and Canada, citing US Government export regulations.

The Reg says Symantic confirms this block is due to government regulations, but won’t give details. So we don’t know if they’re being over-cautious … or were leaned on.

Security bosses seek to dissolve encryption bans: An international security consortium is set to lobby governments around the world to withdraw restrictions on encryption standards.

The Jericho Forum, whose membership includes many chief security officers from FTSE 100 companies, will push for the removal of encryption restrictions within the next three-to-five years.

The odd thing about this is that it comes at a time in which governments are making noises about wanting more wiretaps and more control (see e.g. the move to make VOIP and thus in effect every Internet communication easily tapped). And in the background are complaints about encryption.

On the other hand, one gets the impression that government cracking technology available to civilian law enforcement has taken some leaps forward lately, which can only make you wonder what the NSA is holding back.

The NSA is hinting hard that it has cracked the fiber optic barrier and finds encryption 'no more than speed bump'. As usual, might be true (esp. the parts about tracking phones and tapping undersea fiber), but bring truckload of salt to the party.