Web Security and Commerce

Unanticipated Disclosure

Increasingly, the Internet is showing how difficult it is to keep confidential information confidential.

Violating Trade Secrets

Because information can be posted anonymously, the Internet can be used to attack individuals or corporations by revealing their carefully held secrets without fear of retribution. In two well-publicized cases, intellectual property belonging to RSA Data Security, Inc. was revealed over the Internet. As a result of the revelations, RSA no longer holds a monopoly over its RC2 and RC4 data encryption algorithms, and individuals have been able to create programs that interoperate with Netscape Navigator but do not generate royalties for RSA. (We discuss this issue more fully in Chapter 11, in the section called Section 11.3.2.2.)

Revealing Disparaging Remarks

Search engines make it increasingly difficult to hide disparaging remarks from the people or corporation being disparaged. This is because there is a natural tendency on the part of people to search for their own names. When people find themselves or their companies described on the Internet in an unflattering light, they can be quick to anger. Caution is advised.