Mozilla With Crypto Code Released

physicman writes "I just read on MozillaZine that there is finally a release containing the new crypto code. This means we will eventually get the chance to get access to secure Websites with our favorite nearly-in-beta-stage browser. " Mozilla's really been making a lot of progress recently -- and it looks great.

Comments

Don't get excited yet; wait until after 9/20/2000

[David Jao]

It's certainly great news to see Mozilla release crypto-anything, but I find this release underwhelming in several aspects. In order to actaully use any of the crypto, you need a binary-only "Personal Security Manager" from iplanet that is only available for Windows and Linux systems.

Of course this is not Netscape's or Mozilla's fault. The fault lies entirely with RSA Data Laboratories, who refuse to license their patented RSA algorithm to any open source projects. While liberalization of US export laws is very nice, I think we're going to have to wait until after the RSA patent expires on Sept. 20 before people outside of Netscape (well, US citizens anyway) can start to tinker with the cryptography software themselves.

It's fascinating how RSA Data Laboratories was able to force the whole world to use RSA as their public key cryptography standard instead of the technically superior Diffie-Hellman/El Gamal algorithm. They did this by simply refusing to license Diffie-Hellman to anybody (yes, they owned a patent on that, back before it expired in 1997). Today the Diffie-Hellman algorithm has been out of patent protection for 3 years, but almost nobody uses it, because of the need to remain compatible with the large installed base of software that was forced to use RSA.

Let's hope the current patent shenanigans that are holding back Mozilla crypto are the last adverse effects that the open source community will ever see from RSA Data Laboratories, Inc.