Excerpts from mail: 29-Jan-96 Re: FV Demonstrates Fatal F.. Jamie Zawinski@netscape. (473*)
I'll bet they could get a patent on it... There's probably some money to be made with that approach.
Actually, I'm pretty sure it was Eric Hughes who said something like (apologies if I'm misquoting or misremembering) "The most profitable course of action, for a person who discovers a security hole, is almost always to keep quiet about it." It's very easy to see how a criminal can make money with this approach, but it's much harder to see how a legitimate business could do so. We did what we thought was the responsible thing, and tried to describe it in terms that were also in our business interest. Now, if I figure out how to really *solve* this problem, that would be worth patenting.... :-) -- NB -------- Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb@fv.com> Chief Scientist, First Virtual Holdings FAQ & PGP key: nsb+faq@nsb.fv.com