E-Commerce Security Is Broken, Vulnerable, Says Hacker Conference Founder

Lots of code excitement will spring from the Black Hat hacker conference this week, but already a huge controversy is erupting: Black Hat's founder thinks SSL--the security code making much of online commerce safe--is broken. 

SSL, Secure Sockets Layer (and its successor Transport Layer Security) is a Net-based security protocol that ensures communications between computers is safe and unhackable--essentially so that no one can "listen in." It works like this: A server and computer connect...