why pgp sucks

Derek Atkins warlord at MIT.EDU
Fri Feb 10 13:10:58 PST 1995


> Doesn't having some kind of central record of keys go against
> the principle of PGP?  Unless you're just talking about having
> a name attached to each key, but not exactly a DNS for key
> id's...  I'll admit I'm a little confused.

Not at all.

The point is to have a centralized, distributed key distribution
mechanism, similar in concept to the PGP Public Keyservers, but which
scale much much better.  The concept is similar to a DNS of PGP keys
(think of the DNS model, not the DNS implementation) where you have
keys distributed based upon site.  For example, MIT could server MIT's
keys, and CMU would server CMU's keys.

This does not go against PGP in any way.  In fact, it augments PGP
wonderfully.  How else would we be able to have a world-wide white
pages of PGP Public Keys?

-derek







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