-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Some of you may be aware of this interesting new computer named the "BeBox" which will start shipping in Q1 96 I think. Go here for more info. A paragraph on the Q&A page caught my attention and when they asked for expert advice I naturally thought of you guys. "Q: What security protection will the BeBox have? A: We're planning to offer a security/encryption mechanism at the kernel level. However, we haven't nailed down the details of this mechanism, so your expert input would be appreciated. One of our primary interests is to allow encryption of application software for individual machines. (The flash ROM in each BeBox will be serialized in the portion of the ROM which is unmodifiable.)" I have two things to add: 1. The scheme they mention there is, I think, intended to be a software protection scheme and like all such is doomed to failure. I hope they don't spend to much effort on it. On the other hand there might be some nifty crypto applications that could use this unique identifier. Although none come to mind... 2. Be, Inc. is located in Menlo Park, CA, USA and Paris, France. They couldn't have picked two countries who are more likely to royally screw them by restricting the export/sale of their product once said product has encryption built-in. (Of course they could put the encryption in a loadable kernel module, which would be an interesting test of ITAR's "crypto-with-a-hole" restrictions.) I hope the NSA isn't reading this and getting ideas... Bryce signatures follow  "To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield." <a href="http://www-ugrad.cs.colorado.edu/~wilcoxb/Niche.html"> bryce@colorado.edu </a>  -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Auto-signed under Unix with 'BAP' Easy-PGP v1.01 iQCVAwUBMKlOufWZSllhfG25AQFQWwP/TQ6MM3xmoZ6bel/mTsLhX/TpEOn5YWMc F6IsTUfpLbCMHGUmIoF09qFJNaB2zvPhy8gzx9eZxU1EoPYBCi76q/pNWGiyw0Xa 21iRjC62pq/v8oroQCPpLgU27btd8EBlz7/q46tzWD1Jphb5IjTQ1L0PxqQB6H5t EBhbsR8h9iA= =9bYq -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----