Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Symantec Restricts Crypto Export

Posted by Zonk on from the bad-old-days dept.

PhilK writes "Symantec is now refusing to sell LC5 (the Windows password cracking tool, previously from @stake) to anyone outside of the USA and Canada, claiming new Homeland Security laws. Symantec declined to field questions on the rationale for its policy and whether it applies to other products." From the article: "Symantec's restrictions recall the dark days of the crypto wars when users outside the US were not entitled to buy products featuring strong ciphers. These rules, relaxed by the Clinton administration and following a long running campaign by cryptography experts and net activists, are once again rearing their head. Symantec's response to our reader (below) suggests the policy was imposed on it by the US government."

3 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. LC5 - L0phtCrack by spacerog · · Score: 5, Interesting
    It is quite a shame to think of what could have been only to see what has become.

    Yeah, I know, I'm partly at fault. Still, things could have been great.

    But hey, we were all just a bunch of FBI Snitches anyway. Which if true means that there is probably a secret back door in L0phtCrack and still in LC5 that transmits all cracked passwords direct to the FBI so that they can get into any server anywhere. Of course if that is true (and of course it is) DHS and Symantec should actively promote the use and distribution of LC5. All the more passwords they can get. Whatever.

    - Space Rogue
    L0pht Heavy Industries
    Whacked Mac Archives
    Hacker New Network
    Sell Out
    FBI Snitch

    (Pay no attention to this rambling bitter old man.)

  2. Arrogance? by Goth+Biker+Babe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The export ban always made me laugh because it arrogantly assumed that no one outside of the US/Canada was capable of developing their own encryption technologies.

    This is something that British Secret Services have used to their advantage. Public key encryption technologies were developed at GCHQ in the early 70s but unlike the US, they didn't tell anyone until recently so they could use it without anyone knowing.

    Something similar was done with Enigma. The fact that Enigma had been cracked was kept very quiet so that Enigma machines could be sold by the Brits to foreign governments after the war and we could listen in! News that we invented the World's first electronic computer was also kept secret for the same reason.

  3. Yawn, another bullshit screed from The Register by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The crypto regulations haven't changed since they were relaxed under Clinton. Either Symantec is just too lazy to follow the export licensing procedures which are unchanged, or they're trying to drum up interest for a faltering product by pretending that "the US government doesn't want you foreigners to have it,"or it could even be a crass political ploy to cause the usual fly-off-the-handle sorts to rant against some imagined sin of Bush.

    It's quite difficult to take The Register seriously when they post articles such as this. So many of The Register's articles are breathless screeds of the form Civil Liberties to be Abolished in the USA, Film at 11. Remember that the UK has oppressive laws (e.g., the Official Secrets Act) that make the PATRIOT Act in the USA look like a model of civil liberties protection by comparison. I wonder if The Register is secretly funded by the propaganda arms of the UK government.