Multiple symetric cyphers

Derek Atkins warlord at MIT.EDU
Thu Jan 12 09:13:28 PST 1995


> Well, it's no weaker than current systems.  PGP stores the cipher type
> in the source code: it's always IDEA.  One should allow, however, the
> cipher type to be empty alongside the data so that another tool can
> store cipher information.

Actually, a slight correction.  PGP does have an algorithm byte
for the encryption algorithm; this byte is inside the RSA block.
(It doesn't have to be RSA, either, but thats a different story).

So long as you use a public key to encrypt, you get this byte.  If
you just use PGP -c, using the current implementation, you do not
get a type byte.  Oops.

My point is that although the current implementation doesn't have
multiple encryption schemes, that doesn't mean that it can't have
them...

-derek







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