From: wcs@anchor.ho.att.com (bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com +1-510-484-6204)
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 94 19:15:13 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Sending encrypted stuff to non-PGP users.
Message-ID: <9402250314.AA14972@anchor.ho.att.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


PGP already lets you do almost what you want.
The pgp -c option does conventional crypto, using IDEA, and prompts you
for a passphrase to encrypt it with.  (You can look at the code to see
if it crunches it with MD5 or just uses the first 16 bytes / 128 bits.)
To decrypt, you just do pgp -d filename.
This lets anybody who has the PGP binaries on their machine decrypt it,
even if they haven't bothered setting up public and private keys.
If they use DOS, and either you're located in an encryption-tolerant country
or they're located in your country, you can send them the binary if they want.

If this is too big, you can shred apart the PGP source and do a version with
just the IDEA decryption stuff, leaving out the patent-sensitive RSA code
and most of the fancy help and file-handling stuff.

Of course, if you *still* really want something that's widely executable
for people who don't want to install crypto code on their machines,
you could write yourself an IDEA-decryptor in PostScript (tm) and let them
print the file on their laser printer.  A tad slow, but......
(Yes, they'll need some way to input the passphrase; editing the file works
but leaves traces around.  You'll think of something user-friendly if you're
that perverse :-)

		Bill
# Bill Stewart  AT&T Global Information Solutions, aka NCR Corp
# 6870 Koll Center Parkway, Pleasanton CA, 94566 Phone 1-510-484-6204 fax-6399
# email bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com billstewart@attmail.com
# ViaCrypt PGP Key IDs 384/C2AFCD 1024/9D6465