From: Anonymous <mg5n+ea1e6llvoz70pb6bweqlrmyla4udd80xgn0a0saq03@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 94 09:53:28 PDT
To: mg5n+anz3ajg8o1yxicqzt6v6qgpg3tkhddpqw3jl@andrew.cmu.edu (cypherpunks)
Subject: Dolphin Encryption Tutorial
Message-ID: <Added.shfgNum00UdZ0OvU4M@andrew.cmu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


I just received this encryption "tutorial", which is really a thinly
disguised sales pitch for Dolphin Encryption software.  The sales
pitch seems aimed toward less knowledgable users of PGP.

>Some have claimed that PGP is the most secure encryption program
>available for PCs, a claim that does not withstand critical
>examination.

What PGP is built on (IDEA, MD5, RSA) are all available
for public inspection.  Same for RIPEM.  Available for free.

Are you somehow implying the Dolphin Encrypt withstands critical
examination?  Be real.

>Generally public key systems, such as PGP, are much slower than
>secret key systems, and so

??  PGP uses MD5 to hash the passphrase to create a session key.  It
uses the session key to encrypt data, and uses RSA to encrypt the
session key.  It does not perform full blown RSA encryption on the
data.

What follows is a wondrous statistical analysis designed to frighten.
A "weak" system is used to encrypt 2048 bytes, showing statiscal
skewing.  

Fortunately, Dolphin Encrypt produces a flat distrubution when
encrypting a 60201 byte file.

Dolphin encrypt versus a 60201 byte file is superior to another system
versus a 2048 file.  Thank god.  I just wonder what kind of data these
two files are: 2048 bytes of ascii text versus 60201 bytes of a jpeg,
zip archive, random noise?

The comparison, fairly useless as it is, is even more useless without
this further information.