From: foodie@netcom.com (Jamie Lawrence)
Date: Fri, 23 Dec 94 10:20:58 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Is it possible to break Norton Encrypt??
Message-ID: <ab20bd52010210042cf4@DialupEudora>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Bear with me, all. I am on my first cup of coffee.

At 9:40 AM 12/23/94, Eric Hughes wrote:

>Does anybody here know jack about Norton Encrypt?

Well, I do have qualms about this, but I am assuming/hoping
the original poster doesn't know what they are doing and
wanted an answer like "Look in resource #164, dood" (call
me a bleeding heart). Norton Encrypt for the Mac does have
major problems.  Key handling is botched such that the
keyspace is significantly less than the full 56 bits specified,
through what looks like a combination of inept implementation
and perhaps outright bugs. I don't remember all the details,
but I think NE converts to all lower case or some such, and
discards anything past 8 characters of passphrase. There is
a file on one of the crypto sites about NE. I would direct
anyone interested to dig around some.


-j, whose next pasttime this morning is helping
con artists swindle old folks.

>Eric

--
On the internet, nobody knows you're a deity.
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                                         foodie@netcom.com