What iteration counts are used?
A. By default I set the encryption iteration count to 1000 and the MAC count to 1. If you use the maciter option the MAC iteration count is also set to 1000 but the file cannot be imported into MSIE4 (but it can be imported into MSIE5). If you use the noiter option the iteration count is set to 1: since this makes dictionary attacks on the password easier this is not recommended. The PKCS#12 files output by both MS and MSIE4 use 1 for all iteration counts. You can see this yourself with the info option. MSIE5 uses 2000 for the encryption iteration count. If you have the ‘enable strong protection’ option checked then it uses 2000 for the MAC count otherwise it uses 1 (for compatability with earlier versions of MSIE). NS will happily import files with MAC and encryption iteration counts. MSIE4 will only handle encryption iteration counts. This makes MSIE4 more vulnerable because whatever you set the encryption iteration count to you can always make dictionary attacks on the MAC. Even if
