password-cracking by journalists...

[Ricardo Anguiano]

Would such documents be protected by the DMCA?  Let us say that instead
these files were found on Enron computers up at auction.  Does it make a
difference?  Could the reporters be prosecuted and convicted in either
case?

Steve Bellovin <smb at research.att.com> writes:

> A couple of months ago, a Wall Street Journal reporter bought two
> abandoned al Qaeda computers from a looter in Kabul.  Some of the
> files on those machines were encrypted.  But they're dealing with
> that problem:
> 
> 	The unsigned report, protected by a complex password, was
> 	created on Aug. 19, according to the Kabul computer's
> 	internal record. The Wall Street Journal commissioned an
> 	array of high-speed computers programmed to crack passwords.
> 	They took five days to access the file.
> 
> Does anyone have any technical details on this?  (I assume that it's
> a standard password-guessing approach, but it it would be nice to know
> for certain.  If nothing else, are Arabic passwords easier or harder
> to guess than, say, English ones?)




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