Phone call for Mr. Doligez, was Re: SSL challenge -- broken !

[Steven Champeon - Imonics Development]

|   Subject: Re:  Phone call for Mr. Doligez, was Re: SSL challenge -- broken !
|   From: Peter Wayner <pcw at access.digex.net>
|   
|   I don't think that there is any serious worry for Netscape. Their
|   security is fine-- it's just crippled by the US Government. They
|   could probably start distributing binary versions of their software
|   that used full 128 bit keys in several hours. It's just that the
|   Government gets pissed off about these things.

The netscape client already has these capabilities built in. During the
negotiation stage, the client talks to the server, which announces which
strength to use. For exported versions of both the client and the server
they are limited to 40 bit RC4. For US versions, all available strengths
are supported with an option to enable them.

Pull up Netscape, and for the URL type: "about:". It will tell you which
algorithms are used, but not their key bit length. 

When you configure their Commerce server, you have the option to enable
any of the supported bit lengths and algorithms, including RC2 and RC4,
IDEA, 40 -> 128 bits, 64 -> 192 for DES.

Netscape's server, since it must service foreign requests, probably doesn't
even waste its time asking for >40 bit, since that would add to the time
it takes to negotiate a common scheme.

If anyone has any insight into this, please fill me in. I just wanted to
clarify a few things.

Steve

--
Steve Champeon
Technical Lead, Imonics Web Services