CraX0r & Xtr33m

Week of August 14, 2001

The U.S. Congress is telling me what I can or cannot say in my own country.
 - Niels Ferguson

CraX0r and Xtr33m were working in their lab late one night when CraX0r made a remarkable discovery. 'Hey will ya look at this!' he yelped.

'Wazzup?' asked Xtr33m, letting out a resonant Code Red belch.

'This new Acme E-Media Reader...'

'Yeah, it's lame, lame as hell,' offered Xtr33m.

'They just came out with an update, remember?'

'Yeah, so what?'

'So what? SO WHAT?' exclaimed CraX0r, standing up and pointing to his computer screen. 'The lamers forgot to encrypt the data! Look at the frikkin thing! It's wide open!'

Xtr33m squinted.

'Here, look at this,' said CraX0r excitedly, hitting the keyboard in what became a sforzando of activity and resulted in an ActiveMovie window suddenly appearing seemingly out of nowhere.

Xtr33m sat upright now. 'How DA FUKK did you do THAT?' he asked, his voice now full of respect.

'But that's what I'm tellin' ya!' yelped CraX0r back. 'IT'S ALL FUKKIN UNENCRYPTED! THE LAMERS FORGOT TO PUT THE ENCRYPTION SHIT BACK IN!'

'Holy shit!' exclaimed Xtr33m, and he really meant it. For the longest time the dynamic duo was completely silent, lost in thought.

'You can't let anyone know about this,' Xtr33m offered at last, in a warm supportive tone.

'Why not?' asked a perplexed CraX0r.

'The DMCA is why,' responded Xtr33m. 'The Digital Millennium Copyright Act! It strictly prohibits disclosing any information about how to crack encryption schemes. They'd have your ass in jail before you could say Dmitry Sklyarov!'

'But there's no encryption at all!' protested CraX0r.

'So? Most of these so-called encryption schemes are so lame that for all practical purposes they're not encryption either,' stated Xtr33m calmly.

'Maybe having no encryption at all is their idea of a new encryption scheme. Maybe they think they'll fool everyone with it. Who knows? You don't fukkin touch it, I'm tellin ya. They'll screw yer ass so tight you'll wish you were never born.'

Note: radsoft.net has no affiliation whatsoever with these notorious hackers, nor does radsoft.net condone the scientific study of encryption schemes, whether they exist or not. radsoft.net fully supports the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and thinks people should have better things to do than expose lame programmers.

Read Niels Ferguson's 'Censorship in Action' here.