From: Eric Murray <ericm@lne.com>
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 1996 09:33:16 +0800
To: pgf@acadian.net (Phil Fraering)
Subject: Re: Possible snake oil?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.93.960925154728.17155A-100000@stiletto.acadian.net>
Message-ID: <199609252236.PAA08577@slack.lne.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Phil Fraering writes:
> 
> 
> I ran across this at the web site of a New Orleans area web authoring
> company. I checked with a friend of mine of long standing on this list,
> and he assured me that the information was probably false.
> 
> (Here it is...)

[..]

> 
>      SSL & SHTTP Encrypted Web Systems (using the maximum
>      1024-bit encryption keys) 

[..]

> Well? Do _any_ of you know of a 1024-bit encryption standard for the world
> wide web currently in use? According to these people, they're using it.

In non-"export" SSL using RSA as the key-exchange algorithim 1024-bit
RSA keys can be used.  128-bit RC4 is most commonly used as the
symmetric algorithim in this case.

It's not snake oil.  I'd guess that some marketing-type
person found out enough about SSL to know that it uses
1024-bit RSA keys and thoght that since 1024 bits is bigger
than 128, they'd claim 1024 bit keys.  There's nothing really
wrong with that.


-- 
Eric Murray  ericm@lne.com  ericm@motorcycle.com  http://www.lne.com/ericm
If you don't see the fnords, they won't eat your packets.  If you do see the
fnords, they will eat your packets, so you won't see them.
PGP keyid:E03F65E5 fingerprint:50 B0 A2 4C 7D 86 FC 03  92 E8 AC E6 7E 27 29 AF