On Tue, 29 May 2001 08:18:13 -0400 (EDT) Aaron Guy Davies
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> On Mon, 28 May 2001, Aaron P Ingebrigtsen wrote:
>
> > On Sat, 26 May 2001 14:05:40 -0400 (EDT) Aaron Guy Davies
> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > >
> > > You obviously still don't understand PGP. Please go read the
> manual.
> >
> > I understand PGP pretty well, it is the GnuPG program I don't
> understand.
> >
> > The files I was talking about were generated by PGP, not made up
> by my
> > imagination. Also, I figured out that .sig files are detached
> signatures
> > and require the file to which they were signed in order for them
> to
> > decrypt properly or whatever. So if you don't have krepat.txt
> which
> > contains only the text "hello" then you would get some kind of
> error.
> > The .asc file though is the text file AND signature, which is
> really what
> > I wanted in the first place. :)
>
> The point is that PGP *signatures* have nothing to do with
> encryption, and
> are only useful in conjunction with the document they were generated
> from.
> A signature is basically a secure hash of the document it signs,
> verifying
> that the document has not been changed since it was signed. They
> don't
> encrypt anything, and they don't mean anything without a document. A
> PGP
> *key* is what you're probably looking for. Public keys are what you
> need
> if you want to encrypt a document for someone else to read. The
> .asc
> files, if I remember correctly, contain the public key in text
> format.
But the signature IS encrypted, otherwise you would be able to extract
the data no matter what file you point it at, and the text of the
signature would never change no matter what file or message you sign. I
know the signature doesn't encrypt the message or file that you are
signing, that is a different function.
I was wondering, which do you think would be better, Cast, Triple-DES, or
IDEA? UC2 uses MD5 hash for the two crypto-random numbers that it uses
to encrypt useing Triple-DES. PGP can do CAST, Triple-DES, or IDEA
encryption, and I think I might be able to change the hash from SHA1 to
MD5, but I'm not sure. Anyway, which do you think is better?
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