Re: Fortify

[andrew fabbro <afabbro@umich.edu>]

On Fri, 13 Mar 1998, Anonymous wrote:

> toiling in the bowels of Netscape.  An amazing feat, achieving world-wide 
> distribution of millions of copies of strong crypto, the Feds all unknowing.  

Netscape distributes both a domestic version and an international version:

"Note to customers from countries other than Canada and the United States:
Netscape's recent agreement with the U.S. government allows you to
download Netscape Communicator client software with strong encryption
capabilities that can be accessed only when you connect to particular
Netscape servers approved for export. This capability is now built into
all Netscape Communicator client products and does NOT require you to
fill out an eligibility declaration.

U.S. and Canadian citizens and permanent residents may download versions
with strong encryption that is ALWAYS enabled (regardless of the 128-bit
server connected to) but must still fill out an eligibility declaration
before doing so.

This option allows you to talk to sites that use a strong version of
cryptography to encode sensitive information - such as a credit card
number - that you don't want anyone to be able to capture and read
as it is transmitted over the Internet. All Netscape products include
cryptographic capability. However, if you are a U.S. or Canadian citizen
or a legal permanent resident of the United States, you can choose a
version with the stronger encryption always enabled.

Strong encryption refers to the size of the key used to encrypt the
message. Roughly speaking, messages encrypted with strong (128-bit)
encryption are 309,485,009,821,345,068,724,781,056 times harder to break
than those that use 40-bit encryption. However, some experts estimate that
keys much shorter than 128 bits will be safe for the next two decades.

The strong U.S./Canada-only encryption version is available in French
and English to U.S. and Canadian citizens and to permanent residents of
the United States only.  Because the U.S. government restricts export of
any product using 128-bit encryption, you will be asked to fill out an
Eligibility Declaration stating that you are a U.S. or Canadian citizen or
a legal permanent resident of the United States before you will be allowed
to download the software you've selected. The Eligibility Declaration
will be stored in a database and made available to the U.S. government
upon request."

	-- http://home.netscape.com/download/client_options.html#enhanced




-- 
 Andrew Fabbro   [afabbro@umich.edu]   [andrewf@jesuswept.com]
 http://www-personal.umich.edu/~afabbro/          313.647.2713 
 "We make money the old fashion way. We print it." - DigiCrime