RC4 - A response from RSA Data Security, Inc.

[hughes@ah.com (Eric Hughes)]

Weasel words if I ever saw it.

   From: jim@RSA.COM (Jim Bidzos)

   FYI... I'd appreciate if you posted this wherever you saw RC4...

			       WARNING NOTICE

       It has come to RSA Data Security's attention that certain RSA
   trade secrets, in the form of confidential and proprietary source
   code, have been misappropriated and disclosed.  [...]


Let it be officially observed that nowhere in this 'warning' is there
any claim that the alleged RC4 code posted is related in any way to
"certain RSA trade secrets".  The innuendo to Bruce is certainly that,
but there's no official statement to that effect.  All this statement
says is that certain things happened, but does not claim that the
specific code posted is what is being referred to.

And I suspect that's because a statement to that effect would be a
lie, or at the least counterfactual.  If the code posted were
copyrighted, it would be much stronger to make the claim that in fact,
the posted code was RSA code.  That's not actually claimed, and the
statement published stops just short of it, just short of making a
false public statement which would restrain trade.

In other words, it's _all_ hot air, not just most of it.

Eric