Windows 2000 first system with 128-bit encryption

By MICHAEL FOREMAN


After a relaxation in United States export restrictions, Microsoft has announced that Windows 2000 will be the first operating system to feature strong 128-bit encryption.

Guy Hancock, Microsoft Windows marketing manager, confirmed that strong encryption would be included in the first Windows 2000 shipments on February 17, despite the fact that the US Bureau of Export Administration changed its export regulations only on January 12.

Mr Haycock said this was possible as the encryption was enabled using a floppy disk that was packed with each copy of the operating system.

"Secure communications are critical for business applications like e-commerce, and encryption makes messages difficult to crack. Until last week, US regulations placed a limit on the strength of encryption in exported software. Windows NT 4.0, for example, has been available only with 40-bit security outside of the United States and Canada."

However, local users would not be able to download 128-bit versions of the Internet Explorer browser, and Microsoft had no plans to allow them to do so.

"It will probably never happen," Mr Haycock said.

"Microsoft has to uphold United States law, and on the internet it's impossible to tell where you are coming from."

As one of 33 signatories to the 1998 Wassenaar Arrangement on export controls for conventional arms and technologies, New Zealand is now able to import strong encryption products without an export licence from the US Department of Commerce.

Embargoed countries, which may not receive strong encryption or indeed Microsoft products at all, include Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Sudan, Serbia and Taleban-controlled areas of Afghanistan.

Mr Haycock admitted that the situation was highly anomalous, and at some sites users could download browsers as long as they had a domain name ending with ".com".

Yesterday the Tucows site at www.tucows.com was still denying access to 128-bit versions of the Internet Explorer and Netscape Communicator browsers to New Zealand users.

Bill Raike, New Zealand managing director of software encryption specialist RPK, said different sites implemented country checking in different ways.

"The whole issue has been very much up in the air for some time," he said, adding that 128-bit encryption products had been available from sources such as Swiss banks for years.

"The American law is extremely confusing and I can't begin to understand it."