Other things I saw at RSA trade show.

[R. A. Hettinga]

--- begin forwarded text


Status:  U
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 01:53:46 -0800
To: cypherpunks at lne.com
From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart at pobox.com>
Subject: Other things I saw at RSA trade show.
Sender: owner-cypherpunks at lne.com

Lots of VPN/firewall boxes.
Fewer PKI vendors than in the past, mostly now aligned with other products.
A variety of SSL accelerator hardware - the higher-end boxes
claim to have ~10K transactions/second now, with ~50-100K on their next rev.
Some are more general, some more SSL-customized.
At least one has two GigEthernet interfaces, and integrates the
SSL with the TCP/IP stack, so you don't have to run the traffic through
your CPU to decrypt, saving a lot of copying.  It feeds the output
to the private-side computer using a different TCP port for each
certificate you use.
One has been integrated with FreeS/WAN IPSEC as an RSA / 3DES processor.

One VPN-like box which uses SSL instead of IPSEC, from Neoteris.
The nice things that it does are to support access from any SSL-capable
browser
(doesn't have to be your own laptop, as long as you trust it enough),
and to support access to various file system types, so you can use NFS
or other file servers behind it as well as disk-based servers.
It also has a little installable shim program for telnet-over-SSL.

A few secure mail products, such as Zixmail (who also give away screwdrivers.)
Several email-firewall products, with virus checking and spam blocking.
Ironmail sounded like they did a good job.

A number of people with USB key-dongles.  Most are small-memory versions,
e.g. 16KB-32KB, which require a driver rather than emulating a disk drive,
so they're not susceptible to general-purpose viruses, though you could
probably wedge a custom virus onto one.

One company using Java I-Buttons.  Their name was something SSOthinglike -
they do a Single Sign-On application using the I-Button as a token,
and there are now several new mounting hardwares for the buttons.
Dallas Semiconductor just recently merged with Maxim Semiconductor
( www.maxim-ic.com and also www.ibutton.com )

Not much in the way of tchochkes; a few squishballs, pens, T-shirts.
CDROMs are the main giveaway other than brochures.
Be sure to get the one from @Stake.

A few companies were obviously hiring, though not many.

EFF booth has a clunky Secret Decoder Ring.
The NSA booth has some cardboard decoder wheels, and an Enigma.
There's at least one encrypting GSM phone.

Smaller show than in the past.
Looks like IBM's not sponsoring the big party Thursday at the art museum.

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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