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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:20:56 ADT
Enzo Michelangeli (em@who.net)
Tue, 28 Jul 1998 07:59:47 +0800
-----Original Message-----
From: John Viveiros <source@iaccess.za>
Date: Tuesday, July 28, 1998 5:58 AM
>Hi folks, has anyone...
>
>1. considered using DSA (without patent restrictions or royalties) as an
>alternative to RSA and
Yes, but for encryption you'll also need a system performing key exchange
(e.g., Diffie-Hellman). Ciphersuites using them in team are included in
SSL v.3 and required for minimum compliance by TLS and S/MIME v.3 (a work
still in progress).
>2. do any of the browsers currently support DSA and
If you find one please tell me. Currently, Navigator does support DSS but
not DH.
>3. can anyone comment on the strength or weaknesses of DSA or compare it to
>RSA?
You may have a look at the classics: e.g., Applied Cryptography. DSA has
been long suspected of harbouring backdoors, having been designed by NSA,
and also for technical reasons (for example, it allows unscrupulous
implementors to leak pieces of keys or plaintext, due to the availability
of a fat subliminal channel).
Also, DSA (or, better, the present DSS) is limited to 1024-bit keys.
Enzo
The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:20:56 ADT