Current U.S. laws prohibit the export of any encryption device with a key length longer than 40-bits, or roughly the equivalent of Captain Crunch decoder ring. For hardcore math types, I'm told that a 1024-bit key length is 10 to the 296th power more difficult to break than 40 bits.
No comment.
Bizdos seems to have found crypto's magic bullet; a legit way to essentially give the finger to U.S. export laws for crypto product.
Really?
In fact, it's a crime even to put a program like PGP on your laptop and go overseas. The State Department calls that "exporting."
Golly day!
After setting up his Japanese unit, he hired a crack team of Japanese crypto experts who essentially "reverse engineered" the company's own U.S. crypto product, according to Kurt Stammberger, RSA director of technology marketing.
Hot dang!
It was a brilliant move. Bizdos can't be slammed by the State Department for violating crypto export laws because, well, he didn't export a damn thing, except some U.S. greenbacks, which of course, could have gone to U.S. cryptographers, but let's not quibble about jobs.
Anyone want to kick around the subject of global competitiveness?
What's happened here is the Japanese have now trumped the entire world on the crypto market. What's more, Clinton's brain-dead allegiance to the FBI, et al., has now allowed the Japanese government, which still owns a large share of NTT, which owns a minority share of RSA's Japanese subsidiary, to have a lock on the world's strongest encryption technology. Can you say "Remember the VCR" or "Remember the Semiconductor" or how about "Thanks, Bill. We're fucked."
Yes, the guvmint is really stupid, huh? Remind me not to subscribe to cyberwire ... Serious point - what are the chances that the key generator has been tampered with? (assuming the generation is done within the chipset). Gary -- pub 1024/C001D00D 1996/01/22 Gary Howland <gary@systemics.com> Key fingerprint = 0C FB 60 61 4D 3B 24 7D 1C 89 1D BE 1F EE 09 06