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Yet Again Another Snake Oil Vendor
Below is a message I posted to the SpyKing mailing list a few months back
when Jaws decided to spam the list with their crypto "challange".
>From: "William H. Geiger III" <[email protected]>
>Date: Wed, 03 Jun 1998 14:41:24 -0500
>To: SpyKing <[email protected]>
>In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
>Subject: POST RE: $5,000,000 Encryption contest
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
In <[email protected]>, on 06/01/98
at 02:38 AM, SpyKing <[email protected]> said:
>15)From: [email protected]
>Subject: $5,000,000 "Break the Code" Encryption Contest
>Friday May 29, 3:00 pm Eastern Time
>Company Press Release
>SOURCE: JAWS Technologies Inc.
>JAWS Launches $5,000,000 ``Break the Code'' Encryption Contest
<sigh> Yet another Snake-oil post.
Such challenges like this are really meaningless and are designed as a
publicity stunt to gain some free press rather than as a legitimate test
of the strength of the algorithms involved.
The *only* way to test the security of an algorithm is through a process
of peer-review of the source code.
Until JAWS Technologies decides to go through this process I would stay
far away from this and any other products they may produce. It seems quite
clear that they have little to no understanding of the cryptology &
security fields.
I don't know what it is about the list but it seems that we must endure
these snake-oil posts on a periodic basis.
While I have replied here to many of these snake-oil advertisements I have
yet to see one of these companies post a rebuttal (to the list or
privately).
I have submitted a copy of the Snake-Oil FAQ to SpyKing requesting that he
publish it to the list (it's a little long so I don't want to post it
directly). It can also be found at:
http://www.interhack.net/people/cmcurtin/snake-oil-faq.html
Security & Encryption are the big buzz-words in the computer industry and
many companies are looking to cash-in on it. Be very wary of Johnny Come
Lately's who overnight become cryptology "experts".
- --
- ---------------------------------------------------------------
William H. Geiger III http://users.invweb.net/~whgiii
Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0
Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail.
OS/2 PGP 5.0 at: http://users.invweb.net/~whgiii/pgp.html
- ---------------------------------------------------------------
Tag-O-Matic: I love running Windows! NOT!
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Tag-O-Matic: You're throwing it all out the Windows!
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-- End of forwarded message
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Tag-O-Matic: If at first you don't succeed, work for Microsoft.