Brexit deal references Netscape browser, indicating copy and paste from old documents

Computer software created in 1994 is referred to in the agreement’s section on data encryption

If you were writing a 2,000 page document, you’d probably be inclined to copy and paste a bit of some other shit to pad it out.

If said document was the basis for a trading relationship between the world’s fifth largest economy and its largest (if you count the EU as one obvs) you’d probably think again.

The references on page 921 of the trade deal mention software that would now be incredibly vulnerable to cyberattacks. Namely, Netscape browser and Mozilla Mail.

Just in case you forget what Netscape Communicator 4.0 looked like … pic.twitter.com/573xNdN3ZH

— Prof B Buchanan OBE FRSE (@billatnapier) December 26, 2020

News site Hackaday said: “It’s clear that something is amiss in the drafting of this treaty, and we’d go so far as to venture the opinion that a tired civil servant simply cut-and-pasted from a late-1990s security document.”

Others have suggested the words come from a 2008 EU security text.

Bill Buchanan, a cryptography expert at Edinburgh Napier University, told the BBC: “I believe this looks like a standard copy-and-paste of old standards, and with little understanding of the technical details.