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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!newshost.telstra.net!act.news.telstra.net!psgrain!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!athena.cytanet.com.cy!zeus.cc.ucy.ac.cy!newsfeed.ACO.net!Austria.EU.net!news.ping.at!orcus.ping.at!orcus.ping.at!not-for-mail From: robbe@orcus.ping.at (Robert Bihlmeyer) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.os.linux.networking,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: need secure OS to entrust millions to Followup-To: poster Date: 4 Mar 1996 12:25:01 +0100 Organization: At Orcus Lines: 34 Sender: robbe@orcus.ping.at Message-ID: <wska115cdv.fsf@orcus.ping.at> References: <4gi6t6$3h9@lace.colorado.edu> <nc0453Dn96w6.93F@netcom.com> <y5ad974s4v4.fsf@graphics.cs.nyu.edu> <4gqf17$1lr@cynic.portal.ca> <1996Feb25.152559.8977@jarvis.cs.toronto.edu> <4gvchb$ln5@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> <4h7rdd$qeu@park.uvsc.edu> <GUTSCHK.96Mar3112617corpus@uni-muenster.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: orcus.ping.at In-reply-to: gutschk@uni-muenster.de's message of 03 Mar 1996 10:26:17 GMT X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.1 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:89919 comp.os.linux.development.system:18644 comp.os.linux.networking:30560 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:2547 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:2381 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:14847 Hi, >>>>> In article <GUTSCHK.96Mar3112617corpus@uni-muenster.de>, >>>>> gutschk@uni-muenster.de (Markus Gutschke) writes: Markus> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In article Markus> <4h7rdd$qeu@park.uvsc.edu> Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> Markus> writes: [...] >> Public key cryptography (RSA, et. al.) is the ultimate in security >> through obscurity. People trust it every day. Markus> I cannot really see, why public key cryptography implies Markus> obscurity. The whole point of public keys is the fact that Markus> the algorithm and the encoding keys are public. Markus> The questions whether public key encryption is secure, is not Markus> related to it being public. The security of RSA is based on Markus> the assumption that there is no good algorithm for Markus> factorizing large prime numbers. As it is so far impossibly [...] As you said, the main point of RSA is, that a fast factorization algorithm is not known (viz "obscure") to the world at large. Paranoids can start to wonder, if there are in fact people who know this presumed algorithm. Second, one could say, that you need to "obscure" your secret-key in order for RSA work. Granted, the better term here would be "security through secrecy" - there is a difference between my key (which resides in two places at most) and some algorithm, which, though secret in high-level-form, sits on thousends of machines in disguise (obscure low-level-form). Robbe