Provably Correct Crypto?
Jiri Baum
jirib at sweeney.cs.monash.edu.au
Thu Aug 3 00:59:27 PDT 1995
Hello Ray Cromwell <rjc at clark.net>, patl at lcs.mit.edu
and tcmay at sensemedia.net (Timothy C. May)
and cypherpunks at toad.com
> At 4:15 PM 8/1/95, Ray Cromwell wrote:
...
> >PGP, but in the algorithm itself. RSA-in-4-lines-perl is probably
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >provably correct. To guard against trapdoors in PGP, you should
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
...
[emphasis tcmay]
To which tcmay responded:
> This doesn't seem likely. I mean, doesn't "RSA-in-4-lines-of-Perl" *of
> necessity* make use of external library/utility functions? Such as the "dc"
> math routines for the PRNG? Part of its compactness is that it makes use of
> available libraries.
...
AFAIK (my 4 lines might differ from yours), there is no PRNG in the
4 lines of perl. The key is supplied as a parameter, and no guidance
to its generation is given in the implementation.
You are right about the dc, but it only uses that for modular exponentiation,
which is a lot easier to prove correct than PRNG.
Which is not to say that it *has* been proven.
I guess that makes me a nit-picker...
Jiri
--
If you want an answer, please mail to <jirib at cs.monash.edu.au>.
On sweeney, I may delete without reading!
PGP 463A14D5 (but it's at home so it'll take a day or two)
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