Mail typically wants to get sent to multiple receivers, all with different private keys. I vaguely recall that the way PGP works is it generates a symetric cypher key and encrypts the message with that, then encrypts the generated key with the public key of the intended receiver. Is that how it works? Given that, it should be straightforward (and maybe it already does) encrypt the generated key with several public keys so you get one package that can be unsealed by any of several different receivers. Are there other ways to handle sending to multiple receivers? dean
Dean:
Are there other ways to handle sending to multiple receivers?
1) You can send it to a service which copies the message and resends it as many times as you need. Or send it yourself. 2) You can have the multiple recipients each share a key and let them trust each other. (Not recommended for the paranoid). 3) You can use a secret sharing system which is tied to a private key, such that revealing the secret allows for the derivation of the private key. The secret itself is a different private key. (I'm not up on the details of these schemes.) Eric
Doies the scheme I suggested (and I'm sure is not original) work? Using all the various private keys to encrypt a single cypher key that the rest of the message is encrypted with? dean
From: tribble@xanadu.com (E. Dean Tribble)
Mail typically wants to get sent to multiple receivers, all with different private keys. I vaguely recall that the way PGP works is it generates a symetric cypher key and encrypts the message with that, then encrypts the generated key with the public key of the intended receiver. Is that how it works?
Given that, it should be straightforward (and maybe it already does) encrypt the generated key with several public keys so you get one package that can be unsealed by any of several different receivers.
Yes, that should work. PGP doesn't do it, but it would be straightforward to change it so it could. Perry
participants (3)
-
Eric Hughes -
pmetzger＠shearson.com -
tribble＠xanadu.com