Key to the Future of E-Commerce

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

http://techweb.cmp.com/oem/docs/commerce.html

Breaking Into Electronic Commerce [Excerpts]

By Larry Lange

Internet commerce is a riddle wrapped in an enigma. At once the
biggest opportunity the computer and communications industries face in
the latter half of the 1990s, it also represents their biggest risk. ...

The L0pht is about what you'd expect in the way of headquarters for a
motley group of twentysomething computer hackers with Internet
names like Deth Vegtable, Brian Oblivion and Mudge. ...

Mudge and his ilk of brilliant break-in artists believe they play an 
important role as the underground angels of Internet commerce, 
minding the gates to the new digital marketplace. ...

Eric Hughes agrees. As a co-founder of Cypherpunks, Hughes is 
part of a virtual band of code crackers spun out of the Advanced 
Computer Lab at the University of California at Berkeley, connected 
by a regular listserv-group e-mail that reports as many as 60 
security breeches daily. The group's raison d'etre, says Hughes, is 
"evaluating security in the interest of the user.'' His frank appraisal 
of the state of the art in electronic-commerce products is a tonic for 
the hyperbole of the public-relations machine.

"I disagree with the characterization that electronic-security tools 
are in a high state of excellence,'' Hughes says. "In fact, I consider 
the state-of-shelf quite poor and not economical to deploy. Until 
platform security is drastically improved, these kinds of problems 
correctly lead to some queasiness over the widespread use of 
PCs to keep secrets.'' 

Like it or not, the Web denizens like Hughes and Mudge hold the 
key to the future of electronic commerce on the Internet, and 
everyone in the industry knows it. ...

Not all Internet companies are courting the cyber Robin Hoods, 
however. "We're trying to prove that cryptography is powerful and 
can make viable, attractive and commercial propositions, while at 
the same time protecting people's privacy,'' says David Chaum,
"The Cypherpunk approach is the opposite. It's 'We're gonna 
make and break systems and we're gonna debunk things by 
finding weakness in systems.''' 

[Snip balance of longish feature article]