Ron Sigal

A character on the TV show "L.A. Law" once said, "It was the 60s. Safe sex meant keeping the parking brake on." In the early days of public networks security carried a similar sense of urgency. In fact, the network was its own best defense. One of the authors remembers accommodating a colleague by spending an afternoon plotting the hops, gateways, and contorted syntax necessary to send an e-mail from Brooklyn to Michigan. (How many computer scientists does it take to send an e-mail?) Those unlamented days have given way to a world in which an early protocol like FTP, which, in active mode, requires a data transfer connection from the server to an anonymous port on the client, seems either charmingly naive or shockingly promiscuous (depending, perhaps, on when you were bo... (more)