symmetric encryption broken

Michael H. Warfield mhw@wittsend.com
Fri Mar 9 21:23:07 2001


On Fri, Mar 09, 2001 at 11:41:25AM -0700, Nathan Johnson wrote:

> For tests on my system, under no circumstance does symmetric encryption

> (gpg -c)

> work. Files become scrambled, but never de-scrambled. Files aren't even the
> same size after reversing the encryption. I have tried various encryption and
> compression algorithms.
What happens if you specify "a" (ascii armor) or "t" (text file)?
> Is generic symmetric encryption of files un-implemented? a known problem?
> If there is more information or tests I can provide, please let me know.
Seems to be working fine on my system and I decrypt symetrical stuff all the time. I would be in serious hurt if that didn't work.
> Here is information on my system:

> gpg (GnuPG) 1.0.4
> Supported algorithms:
> Cipher: 3DES, CAST5, BLOWFISH, RIJNDAEL, RIJNDAEL192, RIJNDAEL256, TWOFISH
Have you tried different algorithms to see if that makes a difference. I'm largely stuck working with Idea, due to compatibility issues with PGP 2.6.2.
> libc 2.2.1
Hmmm... RedHat 7.0?
> Linux 2.4.2
> AMD Duron
I'm running RedHat 6.x on several machines (libc 2.1.3) with 2.4.2 and not experiencing any problems with that.
> /usr/bin/gpg: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1, dynamically
> linked (uses shared libs), stripped
Mike -- Michael H. Warfield | (770) 985-6132 | mhw@WittsEnd.com (The Mad Wizard) | (678) 463-0932 | http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/ NIC whois: MHW9 | An optimist believes we live in the best of all PGP Key: 0xDF1DD471 | possible worlds. A pessimist is sure of it!