[107515] in Cypherpunks
What good's a faster pk algorithm?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jim Gillogly)
Fri Jan 15 12:27:31 1999
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 09:09:24 -0800
From: Jim Gillogly <jim@acm.org>
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Reply-To: Jim Gillogly <jim@acm.org>
Bennett Haselton writes:
> How much does a faster public-key encryption algorithm gain? I thought the
> conventional wisdom was that encrypted communications involved generating a
> one-time session key that was enciphered using public-key encryption, and
> then the rest of the transmission was encrypted with that session key as
> the secret key -- so that the speed of the secret-key algorithm was what
> made most of the difference.
If the public-key algorithm were fast enough, the symmetric algorithm
wouldn't be needed. This would simplify the total system dramatically,
which would help with analysis of the system and related protocols.
To paraphrase Einstein, a cryptosystem should be as simple as possible,
but no simpler.
--
Jim Gillogly
Trewesday, 24 Afteryule S.R. 1999, 17:04
12.19.5.15.9, 9 Muluc 2 Muan, Third Lord of Night
