Humble Netscape Hacker Owns Up

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday August 21, 1995

By Staff and wires

DAMIEN Doligez, the young French computer expert who cracked Netscape Communications' supposedly unbreakable encryption system last week, has admitted he was not the first to do it. Under the heading "Late Breaking News - I was not the first", Doligez magnanimously wrote on his own Internet Web site that someone else did it two hours before. Netscape's encryption system was designed to let users carry out credit card transactions on the Internet by encoding the sensitive financial data with a "key" that no hacker could crack. Using around 120 networked computers over 15 days, Doligez raced through the encryption code's 1,000 billion combinations, until he found the right one at 12.23 pm last Tuesday. He discovered later that a David Byers, believed to be a friend of his, had cracked the code just before 10.43 am. Undaunted, Doligez announced on the Web (http://pauillac.inria.fr/ ~doligez/ssl) he would take up more challenges to break encryption systems. As for Netscape, he said the company should simply push the Government of the United States for permission to use tougher encryption algorithms.

BOOKS BONANZA

STILL worried you may not have enough information on Windows 95 despite the barrage from Microsoft? Go to your local bookstore in a couple of weeks. The Wall Street Journal reports that around 450 books on Win 95 are about to hit bookshelves across the world. The paper quotes officials from the Barnes & Noble bookstore in the US as saying Win 95 could, for a few months, sell as many books as entire general categories, such as fiction. The Idiots' and Dummies' guides are expected to have the biggest print runs. Is there some kind of message in that?

INTEL ON THE BUG

YOU can't shut Intel up now. Learning from its Pentium bug fiasco last year, Intel now keeps everyone informed of every minor bug discovered in its hardware. It helps when the bug is in a chip made by another company, such as the faulty IDE hard drive controller used on some early Intel motherboards which was manufactured by Micron Electronics. Intel alerted software makers as early as last year and most issued software patches to overcome the bug. But The New York Times quotes Intel officials as saying one version of IBM's OS/2 operating system (believed to be Warp) is affected by the bug, as well as a Unix-based program called Linux and an early version of Windows NT. An IDE controller controls the flow of data from a hard disk to a processor and the flaw caused problems when the affected operating systems multitasked some programs. The chip is used only in PCI-based systems with an IDE-type hard drive, which make up a small percentage of all Intel motherboards, Intel reportedly said. The problem did not affect any DOS or Windows operating systems, including Win 95 software, according to Intel.

AND THE 'ROOS?

LISTENING to Trade Minister Bob McMullan announcing the "TradeBlazer" World Wide Web site for Australian exporters to display their wares to the world, Cyberspy was reminded of another just-launched site featuring Australian exporters. Called the Shop Australia Mall (http://www.ozemail .com.au:80/gday), it features a variety of more traditional items of Aussie culture, from opals and UGG boots to kangaroo scrotums. These last have been fashioned into leather pouches and sell for $US15. They are recommended for keeping tobacco dry, though the sales spiel on the Web site also suggests that they can bring the owner luck.

SAME RATES

VODAFONE, the digital telephone network operator, hit back last week at claims by competitor Telstra that Vodafone's tariffs for sending data over the GSM network were double those of its voice tariffs. In launching its data service for MobileNet digital network two weeks ago, Telstra officials did not tire of pointing out that, by contrast, a voice call on their network cost exactly the same as a data call. Vodafone says rates for its data and voice channels have been the same since July 8. We also came up for mention privately at Vodafone, when we erroneously reported in a story last week that Vodafone did not yet provide a data channel. In fact, it has done so since March, and was the first carrier to do so.

OUT THE WINDOWS

AUS computer industry trade group is trying to have Microsoft Windows NT included in an antitrust settlement with the US Justice Department which is yet to be formally approved. The Computer and Communications Industry Association argues Windows NT should be added to the 1994 consent decree that is intended to make it easier for PC makers to offer operating systems other than Windows 3.1 or Windows 95. Windows NT could emerge as a dominant operating system for networked computers, the group says. The 1994 pact required Microsoft to alter contracts with personal computer manufacturers that allegedly shut out competing operating system software, the program that runs a computer's basic functions. The deal did not cover Microsoft's Windows NT because it didn't control a large share of the market at the time, according to court records. But that's changing, according to John Haven Chapman, CCIA counsel, who cited a study research report saying Windows NT, less prone to glitches and crashes, could be installed on 1.2 million computer servers by the end of 1995, double last year's figures. However, that's still less than a competing products by IBM and Novell.

BILL'S CHINA BLUES

MICROSOFT might be crowing about its market domination of Windows, but IBM has been quietly sewing up the Chinese market, which is not a bad one to have, particularly a few years down the track. Big Blue claims that 30 per cent of all personal computers sold in China during the first half of 1995 were IBM PCs, according to the official China Daily. That's up from a market share of about 25 per cent last year. OK, so the total market is expected to be only a million units this year, similar to Australia's, but the difference is that it's growing at something like 40 per cent a year. IBM's OS/2 had a Win 95-style launch a couple of months ago, and is also reportedly doing well there. Bill of course, isn't sitting back. He recently announced a million dollar scheme to train 2,500 Chinese software experts, scrambling for manpower to promote his global networking strategy in China.