Horseman Number 3: Osama Used 40 bits

[Nelson Minar]

>They were protected with a 40-bit Data Encryption Standard (DES),
>according to the Independent report. This was the maximum strength
>encryption allowed for export by US law until March 2001.

If this report is true, then it's evidence that the previous US crypto
export policy works. In particular the default on Windows machines
used to be 40 bit, you had to go through extra hoops to generate 128
bit. If they'd used an OS with 128 bit keys, then maybe we wouldn't
have been able to read the files?

I still think export restrictions are a bad idea, but what does this
mean?

                                                     nelson at monkey.org
.       .      .     .    .   .  . . http://www.media.mit.edu/~nelson/



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