Welcome to crypto-bits, a new section on this website.
The purpose of this section is to keep an eye on the news on the crypto front, there is a lot of interesting stuff happening on both the political and technical arenas.
There's a page of links to resources and information for those who want more that this feeble page.
First some quick background info.
Changes in the export laws have relaxed some of more assinine rules regarding cryptographic solutions. The new rules haven't made things simpler, but they have at least relaxed the restrictions on exporting software crypto. (I am unsure if there are any changes to hardware crypto export rules. ) Now it is legal to export the source code in electronic form, with little or no regulation. There is still a restriction on sending crypto to the so-called "T-7" countries. Nations which the US Govt views as being supportive of terrorism. (Why these seven and not the US, which has bombed civilians for purely political motives, is a question we will ignore for now.)
You might think that "gee, I am not a criminal, I don't need crypto, after all, I have nothing to hide." If so, please send me your credit card number, I promise to use it for a worthy goal. :)
Enough background for now, how about some news.
A canadian company, CMI Communications would like to offer a secure satellite telephone service to customers in the US, Unfortunately, the FBI thinks it's Too secure, and they can't eavesdrop on the calls. So they are preventing CMI Communications from selling this service in the US. Details
The (non)case against Kevin Mitnick has been dropped, finally. Details
After the ILOVEYOU virus, and the even more annying offshoots, it's hard to take Microsoft seriously when they talk about security anymore. I used to put Microsoft specific stuff here, but who can keep up? exploits and other breaches show up daily, and most of them are inherent to the design of Window 95/98. NT/W2K is better, but still ships with a very poor default security setting, as if Microsoft doesn't care whether their customers are secure or not.