Re: Wassenaar vs. CipherSaber

1998-12-05 Thread Nelson Minar
>I'm spending more and more of my time these days in the free software >community (not all that big a leap for a cypherpunk). I'm seeing the >"crypto integration" problem all over the place. This is an issue of serious concern; it's really holding up the adoption of encryption, particularly at th

Re: PGP compromised on Windows 9x?

1999-02-08 Thread Nelson Minar
Forgive me for saying this, but I'm a bit dismayed at the arrogance of people talking about "idiots" and "stupid" and "fools". People using cryptography on computers are generally not stupid. If they are having a hard time with passphrases, I humbly suggest it is because we as cryptographers and s

Re: IPSEC on a Palm III?

1999-04-08 Thread Nelson Minar
>Eventually someone will write a trojan which searches memory for >Interesting Things left there by other apps or pretends to be a >trusted app to the user. Can you name an operating system in common use today that doesn't suffer from this problem? I see you have a PGP key - are you running it a

Re: so why is IETF stilling adding DES to protocols? (Re: It's official... DES is History)

1999-06-26 Thread Nelson Minar
I agree strongly that having weak crypto in a system is more dangerous than on crypto. The major barrier to crypto these days is not math or computer science, it's usability. Weak crypto creates a usability nightmare. Consider it from a user's perspective, mine. I trade stocks online. My broker s

new export restrictions and free software

1999-09-17 Thread Nelson Minar
Declan asks, in his Wired News article at http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/21810.html >Why did the Clinton administration cave on crypto? I don't understand that they caved on crypto. They've made it easier for commercial products to include crypto, yes. But there are still contro

Re: The problem with Steganography

2000-01-26 Thread Nelson Minar
>I wonder if stego users will have to choose between uncrackable >encryption or undetectable data. I don't think so. Replacing the low-order bits of a picture with random noise (or an encrypted message) is silly - like you say, anyone can find it easily. But there is a certain amount of free entr

Re: reflecting on PGP, keyservers, and the Web of Trust

2000-09-01 Thread Nelson Minar
Nice note, Greg, thank you. I remember the call to arms of PGP, get the whole world encrypting email. And who can forget Gilmore's Free S/WAN goal, to secure 5% of Internet traffic by the end of 1996? These proclamations were hugely inspirational for me. These efforts helped advance practical c