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 How Netscape tried to keep ahead of the hackers [10:37m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1975)

Bill and Bob invite Bob Relyea back to reminisce on Netscape’s early challenges to keep “strong crypto” out of the hands on “non US Domestic” persons, as declared by US Export Restrictions laws. The race was one! You’ll hear what Netscape crypto engineers did to try to stay ahead of the hackers, and the level of effort the hackers used to circumvent them.  This is the classic “cat and mouse” game. Check out the old Fortify effort, which has been frozen circa 2000 when Netscape released version 4.73 that included 128-bit crypto to everyone.

Paul Kocher did a great job at explaining the real challenge faced by security developers: Why companies want to make this a “Stalemate” problem instead of a “Checkmate” one. (PDF Link)

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This entry was posted on Saturday, September 15th, 2007 at 9:42 pm and is filed under SSL, encryption, general security, podcast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.