-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Agreed... but there should be mention of stuff like "Here's our new cryptosystem, try and crack it. If you do, we'll give you the software free," or "here's a big block of ciphertext we encrypted with our proprietary algorithm which we won't describe, try and crack it, but it is unbreakable, however if you do crack it you win a free trip to visit us." Distinguishing what sounds to be a real contest and what sounds like a marketing gimmick would be good. On Sun, 21 Jul 1996, The Deviant wrote:
Be wary of marketing gimmicks related to "if you can crack our software" contests.
Even the best cryptographers and security professionals have done this. RSA did it with their Public Key system, which took 20+ years to break. Throughout history, many security mechanisms, even the best ones, including Cyphers, Locks, Firewalls, etc. have been known to go as far as to offer prizes (some extremely high, upwards of a million dollars, some as low as RSA's famous $100 prize)
I think that this one really is just a bit too broad.
--Deviant
- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Jeremey Barrett Senior Software Engineer jeremey@forequest.com The ForeQuest Company http://www.forequest.com/ "less is more." -- Mies van de Rohe. Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gage, nor any of the numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the dashboard. "The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know what's wrong." -- 'fortune` output -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMfJpFy/fy+vkqMxNAQEq3gP+MKgGjr/hW/IFnl4SDchCPyqy/MwXWjLj LSW+p7BoZJBNcYuK9HhPAH2myKGnXsGfVSAayV6ldTVToQDVsDKBsmFiAc8ONL4y wDMwAp/S69D8kJWRPODMyUbmBZH5cCSxB65/lN4sm/PIbByF/323w8axX0Q2/WTZ 30bnSBr3ep0= =srzc -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----