[14824] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Open Source Embedded SSL - Export Questions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Thor Lancelot Simon)
Thu Nov 27 10:35:32 2003
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 23:06:00 -0500
From: Thor Lancelot Simon <tls@rek.tjls.com>
To: Greg Rose <ggr@qualcomm.com>
Cc: cryptography@metzdowd.com
Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com
In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.22.2.20031127144317.038770f8@203.30.171.17>
On Thu, Nov 27, 2003 at 02:45:47PM +1100, Greg Rose wrote:
> At 12:27 PM 11/27/2003, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> >RC4 is extremely weak for some applications. A block cipher is greatly
> >preferable.
>
> I'm afraid that I can't agree with this howling logical error. RC4 is
> showing its age, but there are other stream ciphers that are acceptable,
Sorry if I mislead -- that was intended as two separate statements, and I
was also in a bit of a hurry.
Yes, of course there are applications for which a stream cipher is preferable
to a block cipher. However, in my experience, programmers often choose RC4
(or another fast stream cipher) by using speed as their only criterion, and
then end up applying it in applications in which a block cipher would be a
better choice.
Thor
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