Re: Internet Privacy Guaranteed ad (POTP Jr.)

[shamrock@netcom.com (Lucky Green)]

At 17:22 2/20/96, IPG Sales wrote:

>If you are able to break the system, and everyone knows what we mean by
>break, then we will publicly admit that we are snake oil salesmen, and
>all the other things that Perry Metzger and others called us.

It is by no means clear to me what "breaking the system" means. One does
not have to be able to decipher a single message to prove a system to be
insecure. Moreover, cryptanalysis is economics: is it more expensive to get
the information by analyzing the crypto than it is to get it by other
means?

Do we have to show an exploitable flaw? Or we have to do the exploit? That
might be expensive. Who would judge the contest?

The alogrithm aside, IPG provides the intial OTP. Seems to me that IPG can
read the messages. End of story.


-- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com>
   PGP encrypted mail preferred.