Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!munnari.oz.au!csc!ccadfa!usage!basser!metro!pta!teti!teslab!andrew
From: andrew@teslab.lab.OZ (Andrew Phillips  289 8712)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: WB 1.3.2
Summary: RSA is not only form of public-key encryption
Message-ID: <201@teslab.lab.OZ>
Date: 12 Oct 89 08:20:05 GMT
References: <4247@sugar.hackercorp.com> <125649@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <1928@convex.UUCP> <193@teslab.lab.oz>
Reply-To: andrew@teslab.lab.oz.au
Organization: Technology Evaluation Section, L.A.B., Sydney
Lines: 40

In article <4247@sugar.hackercorp.com> karl@sugar.hackercorp.com (Karl Lehenbauer) writes:
>I think a lot of people don't realize that to do a public-key encryption
>of nontrivial files, at least by RSA, requires an enormous amount of 
>computation.

Although in my article I did not mention it specifically, I was thinking of 
RSA.  How long would it take to encrypt 1Mb on a 68030 do you think? I have 
no idea myself.  Also I believe there are other less secure, but less 
computationally costly, public-key systems around.

In article <125649@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis) writes:
>Sort of, you seem to mistake a key distribution technique (public-key)
>with an encryption method (such as DES).

I don't think so.  RSA (a form of public-key encryption) has been proposed 
as a key distribution technique for DES.  The reason is that full RSA
encryption is apparently too costly.

In article <1928@convex.UUCP> swarren@eugene.UUCP (Steve Warren) writes:
>There was an article published in Scientific American about seven or
>eight years ago which gives the mathematical justification for this
>seemingly impossible technique.

This article was reprinted in Scientific American's "SPECIAL ISSUE/Vol. 1,
Trends in Computing" (1988) - which has at least a dozen excellent
articles (although I don't like Scientific American normally).
BTW the introduction to this issue, which talked about the future of
computing, had a full page picture of an Amiga (page 13) showing
a child using the graphics capabilities of it (digitizing a drawing
and modifying it), although no mention of which computer was made, and 
the logos had been removed from the front of the machine for some reason.


I'm sorry if my news responses are out-of-date but news takes a long
time to get to Australia.  (Actually it travels quite quickly, downhill,
to Melbourne, but its then uphill to Sydney <:-)

Andrew.
-- 
Andrew Phillips (andrew@teslab.lab.oz{.au}) Ph. +61 (Aust) 2 (Sydney) 289 8712