17 Dec
2003
17 Dec
'03
11:17 p.m.
Well, it's no weaker than current systems. PGP stores the cipher type in the source code: it's always IDEA. One should allow, however, the cipher type to be empty alongside the data so that another tool can store cipher information.
Actually, a slight correction. PGP does have an algorithm byte for the encryption algorithm; this byte is inside the RSA block. (It doesn't have to be RSA, either, but thats a different story). So long as you use a public key to encrypt, you get this byte. If you just use PGP -c, using the current implementation, you do not get a type byte. Oops. My point is that although the current implementation doesn't have multiple encryption schemes, that doesn't mean that it can't have them... -derek