[slightly offtopic] Anyone know what sort of DES Pegasus mail uses to encrypt mail?

Daniel Pittman (danielp@osa.de)
Thu, 23 Jul 1998 16:13:12 +0200

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Hi guys.

Sorry that this is a little off topic, but I figure that here is my best
chance to find this information, all other resources (save damned
reverse engineering) having been exhausted.

If you have used Pegasus mail before, you would know that it provides an
internal encryption function. This is some form of DES, accourding to
their web site, and is presumably < 40 bits, as they quite happily allow
worldwide downloads of the binard from the US. However, actual details
on which form of DES, and how they turn an input password into a key
were not supplied.

Now, my company decided that this encryption was just dandy for
security, and that everyone should use it for all encrypted mail. This,
along with their idiocies about passwords used have me quite annoyed -
but that is *far* from the point of this.

What I am wanting to do, so as not to have to give up my nice, efficient
unix mailer, while retaining the abilitiy to work with others is
implement (or locate an implementation of) the Pegasus encryption, and
then do a little hacking and add that to my mailer.

The main problem is: no idea what the format of the DES used is.

So, if anyone could supply me with a simple answer to this question, I
would be very apreciative.

Thanks,
        Daniel

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