Cryto article in SJ Mercenary

There's a full page equivalent article on encyption in today's San Jose
Mercury News (12E-11E). The article concentrates on public key
cryptography, and mixes some good stuff with some silly mistakes. The
first page has about 4/5th of the article devoted to a big diagram showing
how someone using public key encryption to cover a whole message, and sent
it over the internet to someone in Argentina. All this without a mention
of using symmetric cyphers, and without even mentioning ITAR. 

Another 1/8th of this page is given over to a bunch of cypher text that
supposedly encodes the address of "Mr Cosmic Kumquat, SSl Trusters etc.." 
This address looks kind of familiar... but they seem to imply that the 
cyphertext is the output of an RSA encrpytion, not RC4. 

They then go on to discuss factoring, and explain the difference between 
the strength of algorithms in theory, and how Netscape became vulnerable 
due to "beginners mistakes" in the implementation, and how security is 
best assured by open disclosure, not security through obscurity. 

Simon
----
(defun modexpt (x y n)  "computes (x^y) mod n"
  (cond ((= y 0) 1) 	((= y 1) (mod x n))
	((evenp y) (mod (expt (modexpt x (/ y 2) n) 2) n))
	(t (mod (* x (modexpt x (1- y) n)) n))))

> There's a full page equivalent article on encyption in today's San Jose
> Mercury News (12E-11E). The article concentrates on public key
> cryptography, and mixes some good stuff with some silly mistakes. The
> first page has about 4/5th of the article devoted to a big diagram showing
> how someone using public key encryption to cover a whole message, and sent
> it over the internet to someone in Argentina. All this without a mention
> of using symmetric cyphers, and without even mentioning ITAR. 

I don't think ITAR is very relevant here.  After all, there are dozens
of RSA implementations available from outside the US, and they are not
patent-restricted like in the US.  It is really much easier to use and
get RSA *outside* the US than inside.  (For some pointers, see
"http://www.cs.hut.fi/crypto/".)  Besides, as far as I understand, one
of the RSA inventors wasn't even a US citizen...

    Tatu