fwd: What good is this really going to be?

[SL Baur]

brian moore <bem at cmc.net> writes:

> On Fri, Dec 04, 1998 at 07:34:40PM -0500, John A. Martin wrote:
>> Do the dire RNG warnings below arise because the kludge RNG is used
>> when signing a file or just because a gpg compiled with the kludge was
>> started?

> Hrrrm... You do need a random number (160 bits) for DSA signatures.

Sigh.  O.K.  Thanks for the response.  Unfortunately that pretty much
eliminates any use we have for gnupg until something gets fixed for
BSDI.

>> From Applied Crypto: "If Eve ever recovers a k that Alice used to sign a
> message, perhaps by exploiting some properties of the random-number
> generator that generated k, she can recover Alice's private key, x."

> So, yes, the warning is there for a reason.

> You should be able to sign with PGP5 and have GPG verify it though.
> It's not fully free, but it's better to be safe.

There isn't a version of PGP5 I particularly trust or have tested, but
I suppose that's what we'll have to use.