In article <19875.9501201052@exe.dcs.exeter.ac.uk>, you write:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

grendel@netaxs.com wrote:

...

aba@atlas.ex.ac.uk wrote:

...

I have code to generate the RSA key pairs and modulus, what I am looking for is code to factorise a number using one of the better algorithms (quadratic sieve, etc.).

It's been established that the encryption in Netscape is 40 bit RC4, not 40 bit RSA, [...]

Ok, so Netscape (the exported version only?) uses 40bit RC4 for encryption, but what about key exchange? RC4 is a stream cypher so both the receiver and sender need to know the key. Does anybody know what method Netscape uses to exchange keys DH, RSA, other? and what key sizes?

If you read the spec (http://www.mcom.com/info/SSL.html), you will see that SSL uses RSA public key encryption for key exchange. However, the protocol is slightly more general than that, so if there is a different public key algorithm it is possible for SSL to support it. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Kipp E.B. Hickman Netscape Communications Corp. kipp@netscape.com http://home.mcom.com/people/kipp/index.html