Thawte Protects The World From Crypto (was Re: [ Slashdot Message ] Daily Stories)

Bram Cohen bram at gawth.com
Tue Oct 30 12:15:00 EST 2001


On Wed, 31 Oct 2001, Peter Gutmann wrote:

> As was mentioned on the Slashdot debate, this has nothing to do with crypto but
> is for AuthentiCode signing certs.  Blaming this move in terrorists therefore
> makes it even more bizarre.  According to Thawte (via Slashdot), they were just
> following orders from Verisign.  The only explanation I can think of is that
> it's some attempt by MS to further lock small developers out of XP/.NET
> (alongside charging $1K/year for developers and similar things), but that's
> pretty far-fetched. 

Not all that far-fetched, mostly I'm not sure microsoft has that much
influence on verisign.

I'd say the most likely explanations are (a) that verisign intends to
change a lot more for a related service which that one would undercut or
(b) the division was losing money so they just canned it. I'm cynical
enough to guess (b)

In any case, it's a safe bet that blaming it on the WTC attacks is
bullshit.

-Bram Cohen

"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent"
                                        -- John Maynard Keynes




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