why no more RSA keys? (was Re: how to `go underground')

[Adam Back]

William Geiger <whgiii at amaranth.com> writes:
> Adam Back <aba at dcs.ex.ac.uk> said:
> 
> >Also, I hear that PGP3.x has support for RSA keys, but won't generate
> >them?  Perhaps we can add that back in also.
> 
> I believe that it is only the freeware PGP 5.0 from the MIT site that has
> RSA key generation disabled. The commercial version should be able to
> generate both key formats.

I've got a copy of PGP 5.0, and yes, it can generate RSA keys also.

I was really quite unclear as to why the freeware one should have
reduced functionality, and as we are finally going to get source code,
I figured it'd be easy to rememdy this deficiency.

Still, I am curious as to why this might be.

One guesses it might have something to do with PGP's financial
interest to move the internet user base away from RSA keys towards El
Gamal/DSS key pairs, so that they can remove RSA backwards
compatibility from the commercial versions, if it comes to that.
(Re. patent and licesning hassles from the litigious legal-beagles at
RSA).  Perhaps.

Clarification welcomed.

Adam
-- 
Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/

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