🚀 go-pugleaf

>>For those not aware, the U.S. Government guards the DES formula,

>   Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't DES or DES-like
>encryption algorithms readily available?

As far as I understand, the DES formula is public, but exporting
impelemntations is prohibited in the USA. However there is
nothing preventing one to make a DES implementation outside the
USA and distributing it. Here in Helsinki University of
Technology Antti Louko has written one, it is available by
anonymous ftp from kampi.hut.fi (130.233.224.2), file is
alo/des-dist.tar.Z.

It was also posted to USENET comp.sources.??? group a while ago,
the posting was dove via a moderator in Australia, since
importing DES to the is legal by the US law. (Please note that
whatever the US government has to say about DES does not apply to
us outside the US territory, the most USA can do is to contact
our government or send a spy killer or invade Finland like they
did invade Panama.)

As to what this has to do with viruses, I don't know, but I think
that a public DES implementation might be interesting enough to
many people in the virus field, so maybe the moderator will be
nice and let this pass.
- --
Timo Kiravuo
Helsinki University of Technology, Computing Center
work: 90-451 4328, home: 90-676 076
kiravuo@hut.fi  sorvi::kiravuo  kiravuo%hut.fi@uunet.uu.net