From: "Mark Rosen" <mrosen@peganet.com>
Date: Sat, 30 Nov 1996 08:57:35 -0800 (PST)
To: "jonathon" <grafolog@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Announcement: Very Good Privacy
Message-ID: <199611301700.MAA05435@mercury.peganet.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> > 	I have written an encryption program called Very Good Privacy 
> 
> 	Trademark violation here.   Probably not a good thing.
	Is PGP trademarked? Are you sure? And if it is, is naming something Very
Good Privacy a violation? Why? Legal people, please help!

> 	I'm not sure how an encryption product that uses encryption
> 	algorithms weaker than Pretty Good Privacy can be described
> 	as being better than PGP.  
> 
> 	Especially when all the algorithms listed have known problems
> 	of one kind, or another.   << And yes, I know that the known
> 	problems -- in some instances --- are entirely theoretical in
> 	nature.  >>
	In your quote, you deleted the smiley about VGP. It's a joke. Your claim
that VGP is weaker than PGP is unfounded, as VGP uses IDEA, which is the
symmetric algorithm used in PGP. ASCII and Vigenere are very weak, but they
are fast and geared toward people who simply want to stop their brother or
sister from getting into something. As for the security of other
algorithms, BlowFish is used in PGPfone and RC4 is used in SSL -- since you
control the key size in VGP, you can make RC4 virtually unbreakable (not to
mention the problem of the attacker figuring out the key size in the first
place).

Mark Rosen
FireSoft - http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Pines/2690
Mark Eats AOL - http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/6660