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Re: macworld crypto articles
At 3:49 PM 9/23/95, steven ryan wrote:
>They searched for an applications programmer *UN*skilled at cryptography to
>try and crack the password protection of the 8 best selling Mac programs.
>Quicken 5.0 was cracked in 5 minutes. Adobe Acrobat in 2 hours.
Yup, pretty amazing. I only skimmed the article, but I believe that out of
all the programs he tried, there was only one whose crypto he couldn't
crack. I found it all a little hard to believe. I mean, even if they used
the most obsolete algorithm, wouldn't you have to know _something_ about
cryptanalysis to crack it? Are these vendors just putting a "this file is
locked with this such and such a password" string at the front of the file,
or what?
Interesting historical note: In my old APL days (early 80's), IBM used to
lock their VSAPL workspaces with just such a scheme--a "locked bit" at some
fixed position in the file. But there were enough other reasons not to use
that horrible product...
--Dave.
--
Dave Mandl
[email protected]
http://wfmu.org/~davem