From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 16:06:07 -0800 (PST)
To: Toto <toto@sk.sympatico.ca>
Subject: Re: IDEA/Strength?
In-Reply-To: <01IFP9X27J408Y52G0@mbcl.rutgers.edu>
Message-ID: <3.0.1.32.19970222160503.0064f008@popd.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 05:57 AM 2/22/97 -0800, Toto wrote:
>> >>Is the strength, or lack thereof, of conventional PGP encryption
>> >>proportional to the length of the conventional password?
...
>  Are you saying that the strength of encryption provided by PGP
>is dependent upon the password one uses?

PGP _conventional_ encryption - the straight IDEA stuff,
not the public-key stuff.  pgp -c just uses a hash of a passphrase
as its encryption key, rather than generating a high-quality 128-bit key
and encrypting it with a public key.

#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp
#     (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies.  Thanks.)