Around the same time, I saw a story about how a French hacker had cracked the 40-bit key to a message encrypted by Netscape's export version. Well, the next day, Netscape's stock dropped significantly. A few days earlier, the big story had been how Microsoft's Windows95 registration procedure took information from your computer and sent it to Microsoft for who knew what nefarious reasons. There were rumors that software would be checked for piracy and confidential files scanned. In both Netscape's and Microsoft's cases, the facts ultimately revealed that neither company had done anything wrong.
Few messages are worth that much effort.
Were it not for restric tive U.S. laws on exporting encryption, the code would have been much harder to crack, as the domestic version is. Two reasons probably explain why these stories are getting so much attention. First, they all received wide attention on the Internet. Once they had gotten circulation there, the vendors had to respond. What we have hoped for has happened, there is now an alternative channel to the mass media that can affect the national news agenda.