What's a "real encryptor"?
Typo correction from first post: If PGP outputted such a hard-to-distinguish-from-random data format, it opens up many different possibilities for sending your messages. Ideally, no one would be able to tell if it was an encrypted message except by successfully decrypting it. As it is now, such schemes have to rely on "encrypting" an already encrypted PGP message to hide the fact that it IS a PGP message! Many of us just want to be left alone and are tired of having our files tagged as BEING encrypted. Personally, I suggest using PGP as a Clipboard utility so I can cut a message out, encrypt it, paste it back in and save it as a word processor file which I then Macintosh BinHex encode as text, and e-mail off. Now I'm just sending a BinHexed word processor file, just like thousands of other Macintosh e-mailers out there every day! This isn't good enough since it is so easy to reverse, AND can be automated. Honestly, I'm not doing this much yet with distant friends, but then there are only two of them ;-), and they are still struggling with just e-mail. PGP is still a program only used by those why really need it. It may remain that way, so for those people, having a random data block output would mean they wont set off alarms and catch the attention of the government, just for sending a love letter to their mistress ;-). It would also render the Clipper issue moot. -=Xenon, who never could type, and breaks things a lot still=-
Xenon, you could make your point a lot clearer if you wouldn't detweil so much in your posts. But let me propose a technique that I think would be what you meant to define as a "real encryptor". Take a file and encrypt it by taking the first block of data and using it as a key to encrypt the rest of the file. Than take the beginning of the file and encrypt it with RSA. Therefore, since you need to know the first block of plaintext to decode the rest of the file, you could only decode the file if you first decoded the RSA block. Perhaps some random padding could also be added, and a random session key inside the RSA. The file would have no identifying markers to show what key it was encrypted with, or what key was needed to decrypt it. Is this what you wanted? I think I could hack that... And a little flame: Before you put down our software, try writing some of your own.
Matthew J Ghio <mg5n+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
And a little flame: Before you put down our software, try writing some of your own.
This is uncalled for. Xenon has consistently admitted that he isn't a programmer and that he isn't *able* to write cryptography software. In no way does that make his criticism any less valid. Rather than wasting time flaming him (I know, you just flamed a little), perhaps *you* should write the code Xenon wants... or perhaps *I* should... That's like telling someone who can't read that they shouldn't criticize the technique that you are using to teach them to read until they have tried to develop their own technique to teach reading... Remember, no matter *how* the criticism is couched, the *real* criticism is that PGP doesn't have random block output mode... All of the other verbage in which it was couched isn't relevant or important... looking past the manner in which the complaint is presented and attempting to fix the problem which was the cause of the complaint is the key to good product maintainence. Let's help PGP become a product... Jon Boone | PSC Networking | boone@psc.edu | (412) 268-6959 | PGP Key # B75699 PGP Public Key fingerprint = 23 59 EC 91 47 A6 E3 92 9E A8 96 6A D9 27 C9 6C
participants (4)
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Jon 'Iain' Boone -
Matthew J Ghio -
qwerty＠netcom.com -
Richard Savel