Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!texbell!sugar!karl
From: karl@sugar.hackercorp.com (Karl Lehenbauer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: WB 1.3.2
Message-ID: <4247@sugar.hackercorp.com>
Date: 30 Sep 89 05:59:52 GMT
References: <14203@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU> <7825@cbmvax.UUCP> <6068@tekigm2.MEN.TEK.COM> <7850@cbmvax.UUCP> <6097@tekigm2.MEN.TEK.COM> <226@estinc.UUCP> <193@teslab.lab.OZ>
Reply-To: karl@sugar.hackercorp.com (Karl Lehenbauer)
Organization: Sugar Land Unix - Houston
Lines: 22

In article <193@teslab.lab.OZ> andrew@teslab.lab.OZ writes:
>Does anyone know if there is any source available for public-key
>encryption around.  I know that certain security agencies have tried
>to inhibit the adoption of such systems.  Personally, I think that
>the benefits (as shown above) to society of totally secure public-key
>encryption would far outway any disadvantages.

I think a lot of people don't realize that to do a public-key encryption
of nontrivial files, at least by RSA, requires an enormous amount of 
computation.

I believe the Internet steering committee has decided to push public-key
encryption for *keys* (this is for email), where the decryption of a
public key results in a DES key to decrypt the message bodies.

I presume that the NSA would not have pushed DES if they could not break it.
I think that was a prudent thing for them to do.  (flames on that remark
via email or to /dev/null please)
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