1993-09-18 - Crypto crackdown - this is it!

Header Data

From: Timothy Newsham <newsham@wiliki.eng.hawaii.edu>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message Hash: a9090df19da897e08773103a936414f22b3761590a1411f996b64c111df36a36
Message ID: <9309180820.AA21475@toad.com>
Reply To: N/A
UTC Datetime: 1993-09-18 08:20:22 UTC
Raw Date: Sat, 18 Sep 93 01:20:22 PDT

Raw message

From: Timothy Newsham <newsham@wiliki.eng.hawaii.edu>
Date: Sat, 18 Sep 93 01:20:22 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Crypto crackdown - this is it!
Message-ID: <9309180820.AA21475@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Anon Said:
> Code we need now!
> 
> Windows NT, OS/2, and UNIX implementations of PGP, set up as a
> server so that any application can access PGP primitives. This
> would establish PGP as a standard encryption server outside the US.
> People use what is easy, so make it easy.

I would love to see this happen.  The programs I have written 
(Circ and link) are currently using an implementation of RSA
I grabbed off of the ghost site in italy.  It is slow and the
interface is poor.  I would love to have a library of routines
that will use PGP key files,  use PGP random number generation
etc.  
It would also be nice if this library allowed access to the
math primatives as well, for implementing other schemes not
in the library like DH (which maybe should be part of the library).
Alls that needs be done is to rip out all the crypto routines, the
random number routines and the key management routines and placing
them in seperate modules.   PGP could be rewritten with this
new structure which would probably make it alot easier to manage
and find bugs in (due to modularity).  This would also ease
recofinguring PGP to do other encryptions (like triple DES).
The PGP command interface would just be a front end, and graphical
front ends could access internals directly instead of hacking
around the normal PGP front end.

Is this something we could see happen?  What do PGP people have
to say about it?

                             ...





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