Pre-class Discussion for Jan 10

There's an interesting episode of the "Cranky Geeks" (great name!) webcast, hosted by PC Magazine columnist John Dvorak, that features Whit Diffie of public key encryption fame. It's a half-hour long, but it covers a wide range of the topics considered today and in this class as a whole. It is also fairly entertaining. At the end of the interview Diffie said he's proposing a goal of strict product liability for software in 10 years. See ref [1] --Tseiver 20:35, 9 January 2008 (EST)

• One interesting topic discussed on this clip was whether or not encryption systems have a backdoor in which hackers can access the protected information. Dan Farmer suggested that it is extremely difficult to understand and figure out the mathematics behind the encryption system and only a few would be able to hack into the system. Regardless, this should be a concern for publishers who want to use encryption programs to secure their copyright works. It will only be a matter of time before hackers discover the backdoor into the encryption. I found one article from 2000 discussing DVD encryption hackers posting the de-encryption code on the Internet DVD Hackers. My understanding is that the few are the ones we should be concerned about in these hacking situations. Generally, most computer users are not the ones developing software or decrypting codes to hack into systems, but it is the few who make the de-encryption codes available to others.KStanfield 21:47, 9 January 2008 (EST)