Using a password as a private key.
Ulf Möller
ulf at fitug.de
Wed Oct 28 16:02:38 PST 1998
>Assymetic crypto systems such as
>Diffie-Hellman, El-Gamel, and DSS, allow the private key to be a
>randomly chosen number. But, as a cute hack, instead of using a
>random number, for the private key, you could use a hash of the User
>Name, and a password.
That has been proposed in the context of elliptic curve cryptography
where the keys don't need much entropy. I think George Barwood's
pegwit works that way.
I don't like the idea though. You're giving everybody the chance to
run a password guessing attack on your secret key.
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