Cryptography

John K Clark (johnkc@well.com)
Sat, 28 Dec 1996 15:01:58 -0800 (PST)


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On Sat, 28 Dec 1996 Hal Finney <hal@rain.org> Wrote:

> John:
>To break a good random number generator like Blum Blum Shub,
>the one that PGP uses, you would need to factor the number
>that it uses as its seed.

> Hal:
>What John says about the properties of Blum Blum Shub is
>correct, however PGP does not use it. PGP encrypts messages
>using the IDEA block cipher, and also uses IDEA in a loop,
>seeded off keyboard timings, to create its random keys.

You are absolutely correct, PGP does not use Blum Blum Shub. Sorry for the
misinformation, there must be a bug in my mental programming.

John K Clark johnkc@well.com

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