From: Mikolaj Habryn <dichro@tartarus.uwa.edu.au>
Date: Sat, 26 Mar 94 06:35:02 PST
To: gtoal@an-teallach.com (Graham Toal)
Subject: Re: Digital Cash
In-Reply-To: <199403261430.OAA22643@an-teallach.com>
Message-ID: <199403261512.XAA25558@lethe.uwa.edu.au>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> There is a *considerable* difference between kiddy hackers breaking
> game protection, and breaking a cryptographically secure protocol.
> 
> What the kiddy hackers do is try to unravel layers of security through
> obscurity.  With the kind of problem we're talking about, all the code
> is actually released into the public domain, available for inspection.
> The security resides in things like the difficulty of inverting complex
> 1:1 hash functions which were modified by a secret key, or of factoring
> the products of large primes, which has been shown to be beyond our
> best mathematicians, and these spotty little kids *ain't* our best
> mathematicians, by a long chalk.
> 
> G
> 

	Let me make a point here: I run an Amiga, and Amiga games do go 
to town on copy protection. They generally rip the OS out of memory, and 
install a custom one, do custom formats of the disk (as in the structure 
is normally unreadable) and have further hard protection such as laser 
holes, etc.
	This is not kids' stuff - this is serious, and these people are 
carcking it within hours. Let them loose on any program with their own 
hardware, and they are capable of doing some quite serious things to the 
rights of the author.

MJH

*       *       Mikolaj J. Habryn
                dichro@tartarus.uwa.edu.au
    *           "Life begins at '040."
                PGP Public key available by finger
    *           "Spaghetti code means job security!"