From: "Mark Rosen" <mrosen@peganet.com>
Date: Sun, 1 Dec 1996 23:55:31 -0800 (PST)
To: "David E. Smith" <cypherpunks@toad.com>
Subject: Re: Announcement: Very Good Privacy
Message-ID: <199612020758.CAA14517@mercury.peganet.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> > What puzzles me is that he included two cyphers that are _extremely_
> >  easy to
> > break, the vignere cypher and the ascii cypher. Why include these? And
> >  what
> > is his new permutation of RC4 and DES?
> > 
> 
> Concur.  Also, let's see: only available for Win95/NT, no sources
> available, and cyphers that are known to be weak - and that can
> be used without any warnings whatsoever - anyone else watching
> their Snake-Oil-O-Meter get pegged?
	The plus side of the Vigenere and ASCII ciphers is that they are fast. For
example, on a friend's machine, I can get 1.7mb/s using ASCII while NewDES,
the fastest "secure" algorithm, runs at a only 600k/s. Documentation of
each algorithm with an explanation of its security is provided in the help
file. As for snake-oil, this is a genuine product. I am trying to compete
with Puffer 2.0, which costs like $25-$30; $5 is certainly less than that.
As soon as I get the money to buy the needed compiler, I'll make a port to
the Mac, and a port to Windows 3.1 should surface in a few days.

> Give us some source code, port it to XWindows, and then maybe
> we'll talk.
	I'm working on installing Linux on my machine and will be working on an X
port. I'll keep you posted. BTW, I personally really enjoy using VGP and
have encrypted all of my source code and other archived things like that.

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