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Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!

1995-10-18 - Re: Netscape rewards are an insult

Header Data

From: Phil Karlton <karlton@netscape.com>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message Hash: f58cda4e148e1803ed2dd9b2e5028c947c7444e2d452ea6404845c7696d154a1
Message ID: <308476FF.7815@netscape.com>
Reply To: <9510171851.AA13486@softnc.com>
UTC Datetime: 1995-10-18 03:39:40 UTC
Raw Date: Tue, 17 Oct 95 20:39:40 PDT

Raw message

From: Phil Karlton <karlton@netscape.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Oct 95 20:39:40 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Netscape rewards are an insult
In-Reply-To: <9510171851.AA13486@softnc.com>
Message-ID: <308476FF.7815@netscape.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> Is Jeff or any of the other netscape posters here officially??

I speak for myself. I am not an official Netscape spokescritter, and
have no desires to be one.

> Or are they here, just out of personal curiosity (without their employers
> knowledge, I mean ...) cause they have a whole lot of spare time on their
> hands to learn about cryptography and security.

I don't have a lot of spare time, but I do consider reading the
messages going to cypherpunks as part of my job. (Well at least some
of each message. :-)

> I wish one of them (or Netscape) would make an official comment to make
> sure that the record is straight, and that there is no mis-reporting.

On what topic?

>         - Netscape has known about this problem since last week's
>           scathing public attack and demonstration of the problem
>           which included sample code posted to the Internet??

I am not quite sure what problem you are talking about? NFS and MITM
ftp attacks?

>         - If you run and use a Netscape client, that any machine
>           anywhere in the world if it's on the Net could retrieve
>           all of the files off of your hard drive or LAN??
> 
>           Or even worse ... erase files on your Hard drive and
>           wipe you out??

Can you expand on this? I am not aware that any of the executables
we have shipped do this. If you get a compromised version of any
program (i.e. one that some attacker has changed) then that changed
version will do whatever the attacker has built it to do. This is not
a Netscape specific issue.

>         - Even if your machine is behind a firewall or proxy server,
>           that there is no protection??  That you can't do anything??

Firewalls and proxies help against many attacks. Without knowing
which one you mean, it's impossible to respond intelligently. (In
particular I know of no sites that allow NFS packets to cross a
firewall boundary.)

PK
--
Philip L. Karlton			karlton@netscape.com
Principal Curmudgeon			http://www.netscape.com/people/karlton
Netscape Communications Corporation

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