Is there a brief explanation available as to how the cipher is used in generating the private/public keys? It seems this is separate from the cipher that is chosen to encrypt my data.
Thanks. Cathy --- Cathy L. Smith Engineer Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Operated by Battelle for the U.S. Department of Energy Phone: 509.375.2687 Fax: 509.375.2330 Email: cathy.sm...@pnl.gov -----Original Message----- From: gnupg-users-boun...@gnupg.org [mailto:gnupg-users-boun...@gnupg.org] On Behalf Of Robert J. Hansen Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2009 9:14 PM To: Allen Schultz Cc: gnupg-users Subject: Re: Selecting cipher to generate a key pair Allen Schultz wrote: > What's the default to encrypting/hashing the secret key? And how good is it? CAST5-128. It's hard to talk about how good it is. Cryptography is an intensively mathematical discipline, and most people are not very well-equipped to discuss those details. Ultimately, it would be like arguing whether King Kong or Godzilla is better at urban destruction. Biologists can argue until the cows come home which one would be better and why, but from the perspective of your average inhabitant of Tokyo or New York City the answer is, "Who cares? Get out of town _right now_!" >From the perspective of the overwhelming majority of OpenPGP users, CAST5-128 does the job just fine. The only instances I'm aware of in which CAST5-128 doesn't do the job well are ones where bureaucratic rules require specific algorithms, and CAST5-128 isn't on that checklist. That's a bureaucratic failing, though, not a failing of CAST5-128. _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users
