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From: ergo@netcom.UUCP (Isaac Rabinovitch)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin,comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Passing proprietary messages through competitors or other sites
Message-ID: <12687@netcom.UUCP>
Date: 25 Jul 90 03:50:24 GMT
References: <11613@hoptoad.uucp> <118@rwing.UUCP>
Organization: UESPA
Lines: 23

In <118@rwing.UUCP> nanook@rwing.UUCP (Robert Dinse) writes:

>In article <11613@hoptoad.uucp>, gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes:
>     The way I've handled this is to agree verbally on a password then crypt
>the message before sending it. Crypted data seems to make it through uucp ok
>and I've not seen too many systems that lack crypt. I'm sure it's not 100%
>secure, but it at least makes it difficult for ordinary users who weren't
>previously employeed by the NSA to look at it.

I'm out of date on encryption software, but didn't there use to be
"public key" algorithms?  You make up a private key, pass it through
a special procedure to produce a public key.  You then publish the
public key.  Anybody who knows the public key can send you an
encrypted message, but you need the private key to decrypt the
message.  Seems tailor-made for this problem.
-- 

ergo@netcom.uucp			Isaac Rabinovitch
atina!pyramid!apple!netcom!ergo		Silicon Valley, CA
uunet!mimsy!ames!claris!netcom!ergo

	"I hate quotations.  Tell me what you know!"
			-- Ralph Waldo Emerson