[66497] in Cypherpunks
Re: Possible snake oil?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Eric Murray)
Wed Sep 25 18:49:44 1996
From: Eric Murray <ericm@lne.com>
To: pgf@acadian.net (Phil Fraering)
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 15:36:04 -0700 (PDT)
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.93.960925154728.17155A-100000@stiletto.acadian.net> from "Phil Fraering" at Sep 25, 96 04:00:40 pm
Phil Fraering writes:
>
>
> I ran across this at the web site of a New Orleans area web authoring
> company. I checked with a friend of mine of long standing on this list,
> and he assured me that the information was probably false.
>
> (Here it is...)
[..]
>
> SSL & SHTTP Encrypted Web Systems (using the maximum
> 1024-bit encryption keys)
[..]
> Well? Do _any_ of you know of a 1024-bit encryption standard for the world
> wide web currently in use? According to these people, they're using it.
In non-"export" SSL using RSA as the key-exchange algorithim 1024-bit
RSA keys can be used. 128-bit RC4 is most commonly used as the
symmetric algorithim in this case.
It's not snake oil. I'd guess that some marketing-type
person found out enough about SSL to know that it uses
1024-bit RSA keys and thoght that since 1024 bits is bigger
than 128, they'd claim 1024 bit keys. There's nothing really
wrong with that.
--
Eric Murray ericm@lne.com ericm@motorcycle.com http://www.lne.com/ericm
If you don't see the fnords, they won't eat your packets. If you do see the
fnords, they will eat your packets, so you won't see them.
PGP keyid:E03F65E5 fingerprint:50 B0 A2 4C 7D 86 FC 03 92 E8 AC E6 7E 27 29 AF
