On 20 Jun 96 at 12:28, Andrew Loewenstern wrote: [..]

There are other, more serious, drawbacks to such a scheme though. You can't change your passphrase without changing your public key. People can try to guess your passphrase with only your public key. Crack can guess peoples account passwords something like 24% of the time. I doubt the average joe would use much better passphrases for their secret key. That's a scary thought!! At least with PGP someone has to get a copy of the encrypted secret key first.

You could require *very good* passphrases. Rather than changing a passphrase, revoke the key. Perhaps expire keys after a certain period of time. Longer lasting keys (such as a digital timestamp service) would save private keys with a protected password instead. --- No-frills sig. Befriend my mail filter by sending a message with the subject "send help" Key-ID: 5D3F2E99 1996/04/22 wlkngowl@unix.asb.com (root@magneto) AB1F4831 1993/05/10 Deranged Mutant <wlkngowl@unix.asb.com> Send a message with the subject "send pgp-key" for a copy of my key.