Bruce Perens on Dimitry Sklyarov: Enemy or friend?
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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