contributed by Blaupause
The Clinton administration will delay by about a month the release of new rules easing export of encryption products, missing the previously announced Dec 15th deadline. A draft of the new rules has drawn widespread criticism and it appears it's going to take a bit longer to work out the revised crypto legislation.

Reuters - via San Jose Mercury News

contributed by Evil Wench
Network Associates has been granted an export license for the popular PGP software. This allows NAI to ship its full strength encryption software almost anywhere. Specific details regarding the export license and its restrictions where not provided.

Info World
Network Associates Inc.

contributed by Evil Wench
New software from Zero-Knowledge Systems has police concerned. Freedom software lets people remain anonymous while sending e-mail, chatting and visiting Web sites. A spokesperson for the National Association of Chiefs of Police has said "It's going to make it a little more difficult to trace wrongdoers."

Nando Times
Freedom 1.0

contributed by Weld Pond
Where has the NSA been and what is its future? Wired takes a look at some of the past shenanigans of the agency and what lies before it in possible upcoming congressional hearings.

Wired

contributed by Zorro
After two months the researchers at Agora, a group of information managers were able to find numerous privacy violating items on the manager of information security at the Regence Group, Kirk Baily. The researchers found a scannable sample of his signature; his speaking schedule over the last two years, copies of his home phone bills, learned the value of his home and even discovered that he had been born by Caesarean section on April 30, 1951, and got a C in English at the University of Washington. (Gives you a sense of the state of privacy in this country today. And people wonder why I use a pseudonym.)

NY Times

contributed by McIntyre
A team of mathematicians from France's INRIA research lab have brought together Net users from around the world to crack the 8th and hardest problem to Certicom's ECC challenge. The same team has already won the first seven problems but the 8th requires much more computing power. Certicom is offering a prize of $10000 for the first correct solution. If this team wins it, $1000 will go to each of the two people who find the match and the remaining $8000 will be donated to the Apache Software Foundation.

Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithms - download your client today!

contributed by Space Rogue
We mention this only under a feeling of obligation not because it is newsworthy. Slashdot.org has created a list of what it feels to be the Top 10 Hacks of All Time. To save you the grief of reading it they are, Orson Wells War of the Worlds, Mars Pathfinder, Ken Thompson's cc hack, The AK-47, Bombes and Colossus, Perl, Second Reality, The Apple II, the SR-71 and the Apollo 13 Mission Rescue. HNN does not particularly agree with the /. readership which just goes to show how widely varied the definition of the word 'hack' has become.

Slashdot.org