[2747] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Secure Office
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Frantz)
Sun May 24 13:58:22 1998
In-Reply-To: <sjm67iynlah.fsf@squeamish-ossifrage.arepa.com>
Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 20:39:31 -0800
To: Derek Atkins <warlord@MIT.EDU>
From: Bill Frantz <frantz@netcom.com>
Cc: "Jay D. Dyson" <jdyson@techreports.jpl.nasa.gov>,
Cryptography List <cryptography@c2.net>
At 11:43 AM -0800 5/22/98, Derek Atkins wrote:
>Bill Frantz <frantz@netcom.com> writes:
>
>> Nonexhaustively: Factoring attacks on RSA. Knowing the public key also
>> gives access to unlimited plaintext/cyphertext pairs for known plaintext
>> attacks.
>
>I've never heard of a known plaintext attack against a _public_ key.
>If you can cite one I'd really like to know.
I don't know of any either. However, see below.
>
>As for factoring attacks, well, you might as well brute-force the IDEA
>keys in use too -- it's about as difficult! I don't see this as a
>valid excuse for not publishing your public key. The only excuse I
>_can_ see is the same reason to have an unpublished phone number --
>you don't want random unknowns to send you random encrypted messages.
>Yeah traffic analysis.
I agree with you. You will note that I specified that this procedure was
for the paranoid. If I were engaged in something that affected a major
nation's national security I might feel different. After all, key pairs
are cheap.
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