Re: PGP scripting...

From: Crispin Cowan (crispinat_private)
Date: Sat Jan 11 2003 - 00:56:35 PST

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    Jason Coombs wrote:
    
    >In addition to being confused about arbitrary asymmetry in RSA cryptography
    >and whether or not e and n were reversibly derived from d such that
    >possession of d was the same as possession of e and n, I was making a
    >practical assertion that many RSA implementations aren't coded in such a way
    >as to facilitate arbitrary designation of which key is public and which
    >private.
    >...
    >Anyone know why? Is this a known performance differential with RSA or is
    >Microsoft doing something strange?
    >
    While it is mathematically satisfying that public and private keys are 
    symmetric, as a practical matter you want to be really, *really* careful 
    to always publis the one key (public), and never, *ever* publish the 
    other key (private). "Oopsing" and publishing the wrong one by mistake 
    would be disasterous.
    
    This makes it rather convenient that the software won't readily allow 
    you to accidentally publish your private key.
    
    Crispin
    
    -- 
    Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
    Chief Scientist, WireX                      http://wirex.com/~crispin/
    Security Hardened Linux Distribution:       http://immunix.org
    Available for purchase: http://wirex.com/Products/Immunix/purchase.html
    			    Just say ".Nyet"
    
    
    
    



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