A GERMAN RESEARCHER has discovered a major security flaw in the latest versions of the PGP free e-mail encryption software that could allow someone to read another person's encrypted e-mail if he or she was able to intercept it. . . .
A GERMAN RESEARCHER has discovered a major security flaw in the latest versions of the PGP free e-mail encryption software that could allow someone to read another person's encrypted e-mail if he or she was able to intercept it.

The flaw, discovered by Ralf Senderek and reported Thursday, highlights the technical difficulties in creating key-recovery systems, said Bruce Schneier, CTO of Counterpane Internet Security and author of Applied Cryptography. Schneier, and a group of other cryptographers predicted the exact type of problem that PGP now faces in a paper they wrote in 1997, when the U.S. government was pushing for key escrow, raising the ire of civil libertarians and many software firms in the process.

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