1996-08-30 - RE: Encryption

Header Data

From: Benjamin Suto <ben@alliedtours.com>
To: “cypherpunks@toad.com>
Message Hash: 36eb99f3639bf716f30b4264fc1576927fb067bebbeceafb2c8771dbb35fd9ab
Message ID: <01BB9693.9F57A220@ben.alliedtours.com>
Reply To: N/A
UTC Datetime: 1996-08-30 23:19:03 UTC
Raw Date: Sat, 31 Aug 1996 07:19:03 +0800

Raw message

From: Benjamin Suto <ben@alliedtours.com>
Date: Sat, 31 Aug 1996 07:19:03 +0800
To: "cypherpunks@toad.com>
Subject: RE: Encryption
Message-ID: <01BB9693.9F57A220@ben.alliedtours.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


I'm probably the last person who could mention something intelligible here, but assuming this encryption algorithm works, and Joe wants to give Jane a file, how would he tell her how to decrypt it?  

If he found a "secure medium" to give her the passcode under, wouldn't encrypting it be useless since he could just use that secure medium to send the original file?  

I think that was the whole point of public key encryption, in that there is no need for a secure medium of any sort, since the public key can only be used to encrypt a message.. that only the private key can decode.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
There are probably other flaws inherent in this encryption system mentioned.. I can imagine that you won't even be able to unencrypt the original message. :)



----------
From: 	Dale Thorn[SMTP:dthorn@gte.net]
Sent: 	Friday, August 30, 1996 5:00 AM
To: 	cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: 	Encryption

It appears to me that PGP encryption et al is really 1940's technology, 
albeit fancied up by 1990's computers.  Why use keys and cyphers when 
all you should have to do is maximize the randomization of bits in a 
script?  Big computers should not be able to de-randomize such encoding, 
since the permutations/combinations would be astronomical after just a 
half-dozen or so random number initializations, as well as the fact that 
the bits are relatively undifferentiated (just ones and zeros) and are 
not maintained with their original bytes, words, paragraphs, or pages?

<<File: ATT00003.txt>>






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