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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:16:56 ADT
mgraffam@mhv.net
Thu, 9 Apr 1998 17:05:45 -0400 (EDT)
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On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, The Sheriff wrote:
> I'm familliar with the basic logistic weaknesses behind PGP (security
> of secret keys and passphrases and the like), but I'm interested
> in what weaknesses (if any) the PGP algorythm has.
Hmm.. well, if you mean you want a look at the encryption/signing
algorithms that PGP uses, then you need to look into RSA, Diffie-Hellman,
IDEA, DSS, CAST(?), SHA and I think that MD5 might be an option in there
too.
RSA, and DH are public key algorithms, IDEA and CAST (does PGP 5.0
freeware use CAST?) are mass-encryption block ciphers. DSS is a
digital signature algorithm (the other method of signing that PGP uses
is to encrypt a hash with the secret key). SHA and MD5 are one-way
hash functions.
There is no "PGP" algorithm. PGP is an application that crypto-related
algorithms.
I don't know of a paper which describes the strengths or weaknesses
of the PGP implementation of these algorithms.
Michael J. Graffam (mgraffam@mhv.net)
http://www.mhv.net/~mgraffam -- Philosophy, Religion, Computers, Crypto, etc
"Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that
it should become a universal law.." - Immanuel Kant "Metaphysics of Morals"
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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:16:56 ADT