This August 2nd article by Bruce Parens does a great job of explaining why the cryptography used by Adobe was easily compromised and the information Sklyarov presented at DEFCON. "E-book publishers might think of jailed Russian cryptanalyst Dimitry Sklyarov as their worst enemy... until they see his slide show.. . .
This August 2nd article by Bruce Parens does a great job of explaining why the cryptography used by Adobe was easily compromised and the information Sklyarov presented at DEFCON. "E-book publishers might think of jailed Russian cryptanalyst Dimitry Sklyarov as their worst enemy... until they see his slide show.

While publishers fret over the potential of illegal copies of their books, Sklyarov's presentation reveals that they could be ripped off in an unexpected way: by producers of astonishingly inept cryptography software. Sklyarov is in jail for revealing that secret.

Publishers encrypt their books to prevent them from being read by anyone except the registered owner... they hope. But it turns out that the encryption software of at least two manufacturers is so weak that it can be broken instantly. One publisher, Sklyarov found, uses a cypher called rot13 that has been known since Caesar's time. An encryption vendor uses a cypher so weak that programmers refer to it as the "Hello World" of cryptography programs, and another embeds code key information in the document, so that the key can be found and used to unlock the document instantly.

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