Re: PGP secret key on multiuser system (again) (was: Risks of keeping...)

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Article #1448

#1448

From: Paul Mather
Date: Mon, 09 Nov 1992 16:19

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Magnus Olsson (magnus@thep.lu.se) asks:
> In short: How secure is the pass phrase mechanism of PGP 2.0?

As far as I'm aware, it's as secure as the algorithm used to actually
encrypt the files one sends using PGP (because it is the same
algorithm).

For efficiency reasons, PGP uses a "quick" but secure secret-key
encryption algorithm (IDEA) to encrypt the actual body of a message sent
using PGP.  The "RSA" portion of PGP is confined to communicating the
random session key used for the IDEA-encrypted body of the message.

As far as I'm aware, IDEA is used to encrypt the pass phrases for secret
keys.  Ergo, if you don't trust IDEA, don't use PGP.

I seem to remember the user manual goes into this in more detail.

Cheers,

Paul.
--
e-mail: p.mather@sees.bangor.ac.uk

If your mailer can't reach me, I'm obviously not worth talking to.

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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!mcsun!uknet!doc.ic.ac.uk!clss1.bangor.ac.uk!sol!mather
From: mather@sees.bangor.ac.uk (Paul Mather)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,alt.security.pgp
Subject: Re: PGP secret key on multiuser system (again) (was: Risks of keeping...)
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Date: 9 Nov 92 16:19:47 GMT
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