Crypto toolbox, Part I I think I was about 15 or 16 when PGP was making headlines for being classified as munitions by the US government and was (supposedly) banned from export. While I wasn’t a subversive type at the time, I got a very strong sense that any software that scared the mighty USA so badly was something I ought to play with and try to …

Letters Surveys - where would we be without them? A lot better off, many of you reckon, but more of that a bit later. First up, a couple of fun-sized snippets from the mailbag, starting with two more missives on Thomas C. Greene and his Steve Gibson bashing, as previously discussed in letters: Your readers seem quite correct that …

Letters This Tuesday's quick peruse of the Vulture Central mail bag kicks off with a couple of comments about Thomas C. Greene's Windows Back door musings. Technically sound, was the consensus, but what about the comments regarding Steve Gibson?: I've realized WHY I dont read your site more often. The article slamming Steve Gibson …

Contrary to a recent rumor circulating on the internet, Microsoft did not intentionally back-door the majority of Windows systems by means of the WMF vulnerability. Although it is a serious issue that should be patched straight away, the idea that it's a secret back door is quite preposterous. The rumor began when popinjay …

He dares to call it "GENESIS" (Gibson's ENcryption-Enhanced Spoofing Immunity System). He dares to call it "Beautiful and Perfect." It's the product of "Three Key Innovations" for which he takes credit and which culminate in an "Encrypted Token," which is another way of saying a "SYNcookie", a quite useful thing developed by Dan …

Techno hypemeister Steve Gibson, who clamored for headlines some months back with a dramatic prediction that the misuse of Win-XP's raw sockets would destabilize the entire Internet, has made his own inadvertent contribution to the malicious hackers' tool chest. Gibson's Web site is littered with hyped-up bells and whistles to …

A reader recently told me that the default settings on his Win-XP Pro firewall made him invisible on the Net, at least according to Steve Gibson's ShieldsUp security diagnostic tool. But this isn't what Gibberson is worried about. As we know, he's terrified that Harry Homeowner users will be Trojanized six ways to Sunday by …

Microsoft has quietly slipped a Universally Unique ID (UUID) into the ISO of build 2600 of Windows XP, thus giving itself the capability of tracking code leaks back to whoever it was that leaked them. News of the UUID's presence originally broke in the Microsoft beta newsgroups, but the matter has been followed up by Steve …

Lemme tell ya 'bout The snakes, the fakes, The lies, the highs....    --Tribe We've had no end of entertainment these past weeks with the Code Red and Code Red Junior IIS worms. Vast battalions of 'security experts' paraded themselves eagerly before the press, trotting out their finest doomsday quotes for a shot at fifteen …

The first Angel blew his trumpet, And there followed hail and fire mixed with blood, Which fell upon the Earth....    --Revelation 8:7 Techno-hypemeister and headline glutton Steve Gibson has joined the Electronic Pearl Harbor dog and pony show alongside numerous clueless mainstream press columnists, bellowing and trumpeting …

Reg Reader Thomas Johnsen reports that he "downloaded the 3MB sound clip [of the Gibson/Greene debate] and listened to it all. For the benefit of all your readers I have made a transcript which you may put on your fine Web site. This way people with slow connections don't need to download the big file." [begin transcript] Host: …

See also: Thank God someone's finally exposing this charlatan You both make good points, but we're still leaning in Steve's direction Dear Mr. Greene, While I don't want to come across as strident, you don't seem to have read the "thousands of words on his Web site" you mention Steve Gibson as having written. There is one …

See also: Thank God someone's finally exposing this charlatan Steve walks on water; you're a moron, and so's your old man In your article posted on www.theregister.co.uk, you make some interesting observations. I think many people failed to understand your point that Win XP won't necessarily increase the number of zombie …

See also: You both make good points, but we're still leaning in Steve's direction Steve walks on water; you're a moron, and so's your old man Have you seen the latest vuln dev posts from this morning? Gibson's taking crap from all angles. Looks like consenses from the list is that he's pretty clueless and only out for PR. …

Techno-myth debunker Rob Rosenberger has received a death threat as a reward for his efforts to expose GRC.com founder Steve Gibson's recent rants on the Win-XP raw-socket terror for the rubbish that they are. Rosenberger's GRC.com spoof page compares, tongue-in-cheek, the devastating spamming potential of the e-mail attachment …

Network ICE has responded angrily to claims by security consultant Steve Gibson that its product, BlackICE Defender is "lame" and claims that it is "actually good for something fly in the face of logic and reality". Gibson made the strong comments during a widely-read piece on his grc.com Web site concerning DDoS attacks he was …

Security expert Steve Gibson has posted a plea on his Web site grc.com for hackers to leave him alone. "I surrender. I surrender right now, completely and unconditionally," it begins. Now what kind of talk is that? Of course this is all over Steve's widely read piece on the DDoS attacks he was suffering. Steve did a whole …

According to top security expert Steve Gibson, Windows XP threatens to make the Internet unstable as it will allow large numbers of people to launch uncontrollable denial-of-service attacks to whichever IP address they see fit. Mr Gibson came across the flaw while doing an in-depth investigation into DoS attacks on his own site …

Independent security expert Steve Gibson has posted his much-awaited analysis of the DDoS attacks launched against his grc.com site and it makes fascinating reading. Steve was hit with two heavy denial-of-service attacks at the start of the month which made his site inaccessible to everyone. This is the start point in an …

Renowned private security expert Steve Gibson has been subject to two major denial of service attacks in the past fortnight. The target is Steve's Web site www.grc.com, standing for Gibson Research Company. The site sells a range of security software designed by Steve himself, as well as a large amount of practical advice on …