From: paul@hawksbill.sprintmrn.com (Paul Ferguson)
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 94 05:51:10 PDT
To: trollins@debbie.telos.com (Tom Rollins)
Subject: Re: Un-Documented Feature
In-Reply-To: <9406291228.AA21293@debbie.telos.com>
Message-ID: <9406291353.AA25111@hawksbill.sprintmrn.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text



> 
> PGP 2.6ui has an undocumented feature.
> 
> When generating a Public/Secret key pair PGP documentaion shows
> the command "pgp -kg" as the way to generate the keys.
> I had posted about how pgp uses a small public key exponent
> of 17 which is 5 bits.
> It turns out that this is only the default setting.
> An Un-Documented feature in PGP 2.6ui (I don't know about other
> versions as I don't have source code for them) lets you specify
> the number of bits in your public key exponent.
> The command "pgp -kg keybits ebits" will let you specify this
> public key exponent size. For example "pgp -kg 1024 256" will
> generate a key with modulus of aprox 1024 bits and a public
> key exponent of 256 bits rather than the 5 bit default.
> 
> Too Bad pgp doesn't let you look at the public key exponent.
> I had to write some code to see them.
>

But then again, cypherpunks _do_ write code, right?  ,-)

- paul