[42603] in Cypherpunks
Perfect Forward Secrecy - is it worth it?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Simon Spero)
Tue Oct 31 17:40:53 1995
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 1995 14:30:04 -0800 (PST)
From: Simon Spero <ses@tipper.oit.unc.edu>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Quick survey; how important is perfect forward secrecy to you? I've asked
three people locally so far and gotten four different answers, so in the
spirit of spreading divisiveness where'er I go, I'll try and get a few
more opinions here :-)
In general, schemes offering PFS require a extra PK-op, and an extra
round-trip when compared to non-PFS schemes. This cost is incurred once
per "session", but can add on the order of seconds to startup times.
Should key-management schemes where PK is available always provide PFS,
allow PFS, or not provide PFS? The amount of code needed to implement
each choice point is similar, if you're using something like BSAFE.
Simon
---
(defun modexpt (x y n) "computes (x^y) mod n"
(cond ((= y 0) 1) ((= y 1) (mod x n))
((evenp y) (mod (expt (modexpt x (/ y 2) n) 2) n))
(t (mod (* x (modexpt x (1- y) n)) n))))
