From: Adam Shostack <adam@homeport.org>
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1996 04:00:22 +0800
To: droelke@rdxsunhost.aud.alcatel.com (Daniel R. Oelke)
Subject: Re: Safemail
In-Reply-To: <9606191910.AA11834@spirit.aud.alcatel.com>
Message-ID: <199606201529.KAA02594@homeport.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


Not to defend the safemail folks, but this does remind me of something
that NeXT did with Eliptic curve based systems; there was no storage
of the private key, it was generated from the passphrase at run time.
It was a side discussion, maybe with Andrew Lorenstien?  Andrew?



Daniel R. Oelke wrote:

| All in all they guy was plesant enough, but no real 
| details on how the system works.  What I got was that
| they "private" key is what you type in.  This is then 
| hashed (he even used the word hash) into a 22 character
| public key that you share with your friends.  
| Even at 8 bits/charcter, 176 bits doesn't sound secure
| for a public key algorithm, but then again this isn't
| RSA we are looking at.


-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume