Has anyone on the list heard of this? Any opinions regarding its security? Dana W. Albrecht dwa@corsair.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
May 21, 1996 -- AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- A fledgling startup, RPK New Zealand, today announced that a new public key encryption system, known also as RPK, is available free, for review and evaluation on the World Wide Web. RPK is inviting worldwide evaluation and scrutiny of their new system with the goal of creating, for the first time ever, a worldwide industrial-strength security and encryption standard. The company is also offering a free version of an end user program designed to be used for secure transfer of information to encourage use and trial of the technology.
RPK New Zealand is one of the new, very small, "worldwide entities" that has benefited from the global market access provided by the public Internet. Previously kept confidential while patent applications were being filed in New Zealand and for the rest of the world under international treaty, the RPK cryptographic system was unveiled this week via the World Wide Web (http://crypto.swdev.co.nz) where the technology's inventor, Bill Raike, has also offered a US$3,000 "RPK SafeCracker Challenge."
Raike, a mathematician and computer scientist who has dual U.S. and New Zealand citizenship, combined some simple algorithms with well- accepted higher mathematics to invent the world's fastest-ever system for secure communications and he's betting US$3,000 that no one in the world can break into RPK's Virtual Vault and thereby prove him and his fledgling startup wrong.