On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 8:17 PM, Sven Radde <em...@sven-radde.de> wrote: > Hi! > > Felipe Alvarez schrieb: >> Someone today shook my understanding of asymmetric ciphers. >> >> _Bob performs symmetric encryption on message with_ >> _key "K" (generated randomly). He then encrypts "K" _ >> _with Alice's public key, and sends both the symetrically _ >> _encrypted message and asymmetrically encrypted key to Alice_ >> >> Is this what happens during most/some/all of public-key >> communications? > Yes. It's called a "hybrid cryptosystem" and is exactly what is done in > virtually all practical implementations (SSL, OpenPGP, ...). > The main reason is that asymmetric operations are hugely inefficient so > that you do not want to encrypt 1GB of data with RSA. > > Another reason: "K" could be separately encrypted with Alice's, Bob's > and Carol's key which allows several recipients for an encrypted message > without having to encrypt the message itself several times. > > HTH, Sven > I learned a lot thanks for explaining it so quickly and easily. I had thought that the entire message was encrypted with (say) RSA! Is there a way to "force" gpg to encrypt an entire message with (example) RSA (just for time-testing purposes?) Felipe
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