Using outdated information as references may be acceptable for amateurs but, surely, professionals were employed to compile "The EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement" ..... or perhaps not .....

I think this is something a non-technical person wouldn't necessarily pick up on. Maybe if there was a month or so to peruse the fine detail, it would have been different.

I feel it's a non-event.

I think if I were totally non-technical, I would understand that the latest methods and software should be used for security. What might not mean a lot to me was the names of the software that does it. I think it's just a case of that.

Sooner or later, that bit of the agreement will get handed to people who are responsible for it and they will know the software to use. They might tut and raise an eyebrow at the text but no error of using early browsers or e-mail software would be made.

I read about Netscape and thought, "They'll no doubt use later software". I can see the reference to old stuff could be thought important by some though. Just not me.

The document also recommends using 1024-bit RSA encryption and the SHA-1 hashing algorithm, which are both outdated and vulnerable to cyber-attacks.

"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," news site Hackaday commented.

Several people have suggested the words were copied from a 2008 EU law, which includes the same text.

Prof Bill Buchanan, a cryptography expert at Edinburgh Napier University, said there was "little excuse" for the outdated references.

"I believe this looks like a standard copy-and-paste of old standards, and with little understanding of the technical details.

"The text is full of acronyms, and it perhaps needs more of a lay person's explanation to define the requirements."

Although SHA-1 and 1024-bit RSA "were a good selection a decade or so ago, they are no longer up to modern security standards," he added.

Read it all already but still hold the opinion. It is old wording but the implementation of it will be current. Thanks though.

Read it all already but still hold the opinion. It is old wording but the implementation of it will be current. Thanks though.