January 14, 2000 - Encryption Level Detection | WebReference

January 14, 2000 - Encryption Level Detection

Yehuda Shiran January 14, 2000
Encryption Level Detection
Tips: January 2000

Yehuda Shiran, Ph.D.
Doc JavaScript

As E-Commerce grows in popularity, so does the need for a secure transfer protocol hosted by the browser. Currently, browsers support two levels of security: 40 bits and 128 bits. The first security level (40 bit) is the base common level, for domestic and international usage. The second level (128 bit) is restricted to domestic usage only.

Financial institutions on the Web need to ensure the security level of their clients before they do business on the Internet. The following JavaScript line will do the trick in Navigator, when entered in the URL box: 

javascript:document.write(navigator.userAgent +"<BR>")

The output of this line will be the following:

Mozilla/4.08 [en] (Win98; I ;Nav)

The character "I" is the International version of the security algorithm, i.e. the 40 bit encryption version. The domestic version (128 bit) uses the "U" character (for USA): 

Mozilla/4.08 [en] (Win98; U ;Nav)

See more examples for using the navigator.userAgent property in Column 47, A DOM-Based Snakes Game, Part II".