[104382] in Cypherpunks
PGP Inc has gone to the dogs
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Adam Back)
Sun Oct 18 05:39:06 1998
Date: Sun, 18 Oct 1998 10:16:23 +0100
From: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Reply-To: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>
PGP Inc has taken leave of it's sense. Masses of untrue claims on web
pages (take a look at examples below), no RSA support, no unix
versions (other than old broken pgp50).
I am at a loss to understand why there is no unix version higher than
pgp50. The unix command line interface is basically a test rig --
surely they would have this working simply to develop pgp55x and
pgp6.0. Even if they don't -- how much work would it be? Not much I
think.
I wish these guys would pull their act together!
> Seamless email integration with:
>
> [...]
>
> - Netscape Communicator 4.0 for Windows, Macintosh, and UNIX
This doesn't seem to be true -- where is the unix netscape plugin?
> Cryptographic algorithms supported
>
> Public key algorithms: Diffie-Hellman/ DSS, RSA
^^^
this also does not seem to be true -- most of these versions seem to
have no RSA support, even for international freeware versions.
> Hash functions: MD5, RIPEMD-160, SHA-1
> Symmetric algorithms: CAST, International Data
> Encryption Algorithm (IDEA), Triple-DES
This pegs my bogosity meter also:
> http://www.pgpinternational.com/
>
> All PGP encryption products are 128 bit strong encryption, world
> wide. The products do not contain an unknown or undocumented message
> or key recovery method (usually called backdoor). The only way to
> recover the encrypted messages is to know and use the applicable
> key. The alternative, testing all possible keys, is practically an
> impossible task to accomplish even when using all computing power in
> the world.
So because they tell us it's got a backdoor that's ok? Even the NSA
or, TIS or the KRAP group could claim the same.
Adam
